BOOK REVIEW
Psychologist Cimbalo’s manifesto asserts that attempts to shoehorn people into generic categories are scientifically invalid and socially disastrous. The author argues that, because “all things in the universe are different,” any efforts to group them and discern uniform underlying properties are illegitimate. He applies this principle to everything from geometry—“In the real world, there are no perfect triangles where the three angles sum to 180 degrees”—to medicine, contending, for example, that it’s impossible to say whether a drug is uniformly safe and effective, as it depends on each patient’s unique circumstances. (He further calls for the repeal of legal restrictions on alcohol and recreational drugs.) Cimbalo goes on to critique various social institutions, including government, the military, religion, science, art, and business. These “earth gods,” he argues, gain power by imposing collective rules and false doctrines of “oneness and truth” on people to protect them from the “One True God”—his term for a reality that’s frighteningly changeable, multifarious, and chaotic. The result of this pervasive “bamboozlement,” Cimbalo contends, is a world where the powerful oppress the weak; people are fired and shunned for exercising free speech; dissidents are ostracized; marriages founder because spouses won’t allow for individual differences; and the U.S. government attacks groups for simply being different. Cimbalo’s analysis of human groupthink is far-reaching and draws on readings of such thinkers as Plato, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Popper to illuminate profound philosophical questions about how people understand the world and its commonalities. He conveys his vision in lucid prose with colorful, arresting imagery. (America, he says at one point, has “become a nation of always-hungry sharks patrolling to disable and consume the less powerful and our perceived enemies.”) Some stances feel underdeveloped—such as his condemnation of insurance for making policy-holders at large pay for individual mistakes—and his rejection of humans’ propensity for noticing similarities, discerning categories, and abstracting regularities seems like an attack on human cognition itself. Still, readers who chafe at grand narratives will find much to ponder here.
An often penetrating and energetic, if idiosyncratic, challenge to conventional wisdom.