How I Escaped Political Correctness And You Can Too

primate needs to belong to troop (boosts oxytocin), to achieve social dominance (boosts serotonin), to seek new food source (boosts dopamine) and avoid danger (danger stimulates cortisol), with analogies to conformity to PC diktats. Pc troop gains social dominance by putting down conservatives as moral/social/intellectual inferiors. Wishful thinking of utopian rewards substitutes for active food seeking and gives cheap dopamine reward for no effort. Urge to save the world displaced mammalian satisfaction of leaving offspring.The most interesting part was her personal story. Her mother was from a Sicilian family that escaped from a mafia-run village – where your life depended on not seeing things, hierarchy was life and death loyalty, and leaving the group could be fatal. So when Breunig found herself lying to her students to remain politically correct (not willing to answer honestly that Japanese adopted TQM from the US military, because it reflected well on US), she suddenly realized that her liberal California state college was a Mafia environment.Unwilling to become conservative and take on family and friends, her personal solution was avoidance (go to the bathroom when PC talk too hostile about ‘them’) and quitting academia. If she is forced to respond to PC bonding through demonization she came up with a stock answer: ‘due to life experiences, I don’t believe in the popular views of good and bad guys.’ Or “I don’t believe in a one party state. I think two parties are healthy.’

This book provides a unique and useful new perspective on what political correctness really is, and why it exists in society. Rather than simply opposing political correctness as bad ideas from political opponents, or endorsing it as the only acceptable way for good people to think about current issues, this book explains how much of what we call political correctness is just the normal operations of how we mammals are wired to behave.The book first goes into how political correctness operates in society, then goes much deeper to show how political correctness also operates among other mammals, and how various situations and behaviors release particular brain chemicals to do specific tasks. Finally, (and most important, in my opinion), the author details her plan for escaping the mammalian herd mentality of political correctness, WITHOUT simply joining another herd. Step by step, she offers a path toward a life determined by your own priorities and interests, without unnecessarily picking fights with those around who still follow one herd or another.Highly recommended!

I respect the author for her knowledge of the mammalian brain and the chemicals therein. HOWEVER, after reading this book 3 times I have come to the conclusion she has simply replaced the hyper-liberalism of her youth and training with hyper-conservatism, replete with the customary loathing of the CNN/NBC/PBS/"MSM" i.e, the "LIBERAL MEDIA."This is all well and good EXCEPT that was supposed to a "self-help" book, not a political polemic. Replacing one echo chamber with another serves no greater good.Again, let me be clear...I LIKE this author and her books, of which I have FOUR. But, this book will be an unfortunate "dog whistle" to liberal-hating conservatives and right-wingers.I understand that I maybe attacked for this review, but, as the author points out, this is inevitable and to be expected when one does not follow the herd/tribe.

I have some health issues and along with them I have a large dollop of anxiety. Other books by this author address anxiety and so when buying one of those I purchased a copy of this book also. I didn't actually read all of either book though...too busy being anxious I guess. When I received a free copy of this book on audio, I decided to listen to it. Am I ever glad I did! I'd grown discouraged with many methods of dealing with panic, stress, and anxiety. I did my best to have proper positive thoughts but inevitably failed. I was afraid ALL of the time; either I was ill or I was afraid of being ill. It had grown very difficult for me to distinguish between being sick to my stomach because of my physical problems and being nauseated because of my ever-present fear. It doesn't help that among my peers anxiety and its related illnesses seem to be...trendy. I'm embarrassed to say it like that but honestly, it seems like the rarity in my area is being in my age range and NOT struggling with depression, anxiety, and/or some autoimmune illness.This book, How I Escaped Political Correctness and You Can Too, was not a magical cure-all for my anxiety. What this book did for me, though, was help me understand that there is not any magical cure-all for my anxiety.I used to think that if I admitted that I wasn't going to wake up one morning and everything be magically all better, it was the same as saying I would be miserable for the rest of my life This is not at all the case! Just knowing WHY my body behaves the way it does during times of stress or illness is incredibly empowering! Understanding what is going on often allows me to turn an impending doom moment aside and be all right after all! I go for very small stretches of time not thinking about my illness now (we're talking a few minutes here and there, but this is actually an incredible victory!) I feel that with some time and some more listening and/or reading of the way my mammal brain works I will be able to begin making new connections in my brain that will help me live more healthfully in my body. This may sound ridiculous but I didn't even know what it meant to be a mammal. Now I have a much better idea and I'm amazed and proud of how smart human's bodies and brains are. Instead of fighting my brain, which has actually evolved to do a darn good job of helping me survive, I am going to commit to understanding better how to help it do its job.One last note: the author gives quite a few examples of how her emerging understanding of certain things conflicted with the political tones of those in her environment. I find this to be true also. The interesting thing is that, speaking broadly, the author refers to people who seem to have a liberal bent. I am steeped in an area that is predominantly conservative. It doesn't matter, I think, what the prevailing belief system is. It all works the same and the message is identical: conform or be cast out. I found this very interesting indeed.

Sin grandes alardes documentales, sólo con las propias referencias de la vida de la autora y cuatro frases que sacan a la luz los principios biológicos de nuestro comportamiento como los homo sapiens que somos, la autora señala un camino interesante de progreso individual y de grupo.

L'auteure a écrit des livres passionnants : 'I, Mammal' et 'Habits of a Happy Brain', en particulier ; offrant un modèle simple et nouveau de ce que certains ont pu nommer : The Hot System (1).Celui-ci est beaucoup plus autobiographique et vaut surtout pour l'explication psychologique des phénomènes, déjà présentée dans les deux ouvrages cités.(1) The Marshmallow Test - Walter Mischel - 2014