Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail by William Ophuls offers up a poignant explanation as to why civilizations fail. He goes step by step through six reasons that lead to civilization collapse. The book is an easy read, and could be read within a day or two as it is about 70 pages of material. It offers up a word of caution as to what will happen should our civilization reverse it’s current course.

The six reasons Ophuls offers up are evident in today’s society. The first he offers is ecological exhaustion, as cities and industrial farms wreak havoc on our environment. Civilizations try to innovate around these problems but are unable to Ophuls notes. The second reason for civilization failure Ophuls notes is exponential growth. Our inability to truly understand the compounding growth of society, from people to ever sprawling cities. The third reason noted by Ophuls in societal collapse is expedited entropy. This relates to the ever diminishing returns on the energy around us, from fossil fuels to the farm fields themselves. The fourth reason is excessive complexity. Quite simply, this is the continued attempts at solving every little societal ill, which in the end leads to a civilization that becomes ungovernable because of all the rule and regulations put in place. There comes a point that it is impossible to follow. The fifth reason is moral decay. This is exactly as stated, the civilization loses its moral compass and descends into a society with no principle on which to stand, and when there is no principles to stand on, the society has no foundation and collapses. The final reason is practical failure. This is simply the failure of all institutions to live up to their intended functions. They become so corrupted and unprincipled they collapse on themselves and leave society to it’s own devices. Immoderate Greatness offers up the warnings of impending society collapse, well worth the read for anyone interested in preserving our current way of life.

Implicit Biases and the Unconscious by Dr. Robert Mather dives into the reasons why we stereotype people and what we can do to correct wayward biases. Dr. Mather breaks down the psychological concepts in easy to understand terms for those of us who are not familiar with the realm of social psychology, and the book has a nice flow to it in terms of reading.

The first four chapters of the book are dedicated to outlining and explaining the concepts of Social Psychology. These key concepts are explained well for the layman, and allow for the reader to see and understand them in action in the later parts of the book where Dr. Mather utilizes various research articles to illustrate the use of the concepts. Key concepts covered in the first four chapters are automaticity, which is what we do without awareness, chronic accessibility, the habitual processing of categories or concepts, and goal-dependent automaticity, where intentional control launches the process without our awareness. Chapter 4 ends the first section of the book with practical ways on how we can correct our biases and stereotypes.

The second part of the book is dedicated to seeing the concepts presented in the first four chapters in action. Perhaps my favorite example Dr. Mather uses to illustrate some of the concepts is the Arab-Israeli Conflict. It outlines the competing ideologies between the two groups, and why there has been such a struggle to come to terms on a peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis. Dr. Mather ends the chapter on the Arab-Israeli conflict with thought provoking questions for the reader on how they would utilize the concepts of Social Psychology to bring about a workable solution between the two groups.

Other topics in the second part of the book include liberal bias in Social Psychology, how American conservatism can save Social Psychology from irrelevance, building a politically tolerant Social Psychology science, implementing mindfulness in the workplace, implicit racial attitudes and their roles in policing, and finishes the discussion with the biases we see in politics, and the impact of those biases on voters and media. Dr. Mather brings to the forefront biases we all have, and practical ways we can be more aware of them, and correct them as needed.

Dumbing Us Down is a collection of speeches and essays by John Taylor Gatto that relate his experiences as a New York City school teacher. As a point of reference, the first publication of this book was 30 years ago. Each speech and essay tackles a particular way that our public schools institution hinders our kids intellectual growth. The first chapter goes through seven lessons that school teachers teach, among them are confusion, emotional and intellectual dependency. Gatto closes out the first chapter outlining how to bring competition to the public school monopoly.

The second chapter gives the history of how compulsory schooling started. Gatto makes the argument in this chapter on that schools teach nothing more that how to obey orders. Gatto also explains how through schooling and homework, we monopolize kids’ time leaving them little time for self exploration and forming their own self identity. Gatto notes that some of the results of this is children who are not curious and who are cruel to each other.

The third chapter is actually an anecdotal essay of Gatto’s childhood, and what led him to become a teacher. Gatto outlines how he left his high paying high potential job in advertising to become a teacher. The chapter closes with a story on how Gatto, who was a substitute teacher at the time, fought for a student who should have been in the higher ability reading class. Years later that student went on to be an award winning teacher herself.

The last two chapters of the book are dedicated to why less school is better and how to use the Congregational Principle to solve the problems with traditional public schools. Gatto covers the corruption of institutional education in chapter four, and how mass education is detrimental to truly educating society, and in chapter five, outlines utilizing the Congregational Principle (which at its core says that good things happen to the human spirit when it is left alone) to reform education in the United States. Less school, along with letting kids explore their world and allow them the time and space to figure out who they are, is the best recipe for educating kids and increasing their intellectual ability and capability.