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Hypersanity: Thinking Beyond Thinking (Ataraxia Book 5) Kindle Edition
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Hone your rational and extra-rational thinking skills to unleash your full human potential.
I have found power in the mysteries of thought. —Euripides
RD Laing presented madness as a voyage of discovery that could open out onto a free state of higher consciousness, or hypersanity. But if there is such a thing as hypersanity, then mere sanity is not all it’s cracked up to be, a state of dormancy and dullness with less vital potential even than madness. We could all go mad, in a way we already are, minus the promise. But what if there was another route to hypersanity, one which, compared to madness, was less fearsome, less dangerous, and less damaging? What if, as well as a back door way, there was also a royal road strewn with petals and sprayed with perfume?
This is a book about thinking, which, astonishingly, is barely taught in formal education. Our culture mostly equates thinking with logical reasoning, and the first few chapters examine logic, reason, their forms, and their flaws, starting with the basics of argumentation. But thinking is also about much more than logical reasoning, and so the book broadens out to examine concepts such as intelligence, knowledge, and truth, and alternative forms of cognition that our culture tends to overlook and underplay, including intuition, emotion, and imagination.
If Hypersanity fails to live up to its tall promise, it should at least make you into a better thinker. And so you can approach the book as an opportunity to hone your thinking skills, which, in the end, are going to be far more important to your impact and wellbeing than any facts that you could ever learn. As BF Skinner once put it, ‘Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.’
Burton guides the reader to unlearn, rediscover, and return to wholeness. It is a journey out of Plato’s cave… —The International Review of Books
★★★★★ There is more golden wisdom flowing from these pages than can be explained in an overview ... Highly recommended. —Grady Harp, Amazon.com Top 100 reviewer
★★★★★ What an intriguing book! It truly is a book that makes you think about thinking ... You will understand not only your own thinking better but also the thinking of others who matter in your world. —Jamie Bee, Amazon.com Top 50 Reviewer
Burton is never short of an interesting and sharp judgment. —Prof Peter Toohey, Psychology Today
I would encourage anyone to read and re-read the book’s last seven chapters … [Hypersanity] has challenged me as a reader but also as an educator, and made me wonder what I have been teaching and why. —Malcolm Nicolson, former head of development for the International Baccalaureate
About the author
Dr Neel Burton FRSA is a psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine-lover who lives and teaches in Oxford, England. He is a Fellow of Green-Templeton College in the University of Oxford, and the recipient of the Society of Authors’ Richard Asher Prize, the British Medical Association’s Young Authors’ Award, the Medical Journalists’ Association Open Book Award, and a Best in the World Gourmand Award. His work has featured in the likes of Aeon, the Spectator, and the Times, and been translated into several languages.
Contents
Introduction
1. Arguments
2. Fallacies
3. Questions
4. Answers
5. Enemies
6. Rhetoric
7. Language
8. Languages
9. Reason
10. Intelligence
11. Knowledge
12. Memory
13. Science
14. Magic
15. Truth
16. Intuition
17. Wisdom
18. Inspiration
19. Insight
20. Emotion
21. Music
22. Imagination
Final Words
◆ Grab your copy now and let’s embark on this liberating journey.
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJune 15, 2019
- File size8238 KB
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From the Publisher
Hypersanity: Thinking Beyond Thinking (Ataraxia Book 5)
There are essentially three types of people: those who love life more than they fear it, those who fear life more than they love it, and those who have no clue what I’m talking about.
‘Hypersanity’ is not a common or accepted term. But neither did I make it up. I first came across it while training in psychiatry, in The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise (1967) by RD Laing. In this book, the Scottish psychiatrist presented ‘madness’ as a voyage of discovery that could open out onto a free state of higher consciousness, or hypersanity. For Laing, the descent into madness could lead to a reckoning, to an awakening, to ‘breakthrough’ rather than ‘breakdown’.
A few months later, I read CG Jung’s autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962), which provided a vivid case in point. In 1913, on the eve of the Great War, Jung broke off his close friendship with Sigmund Freud, and spent the next few years in a troubled state of mind that led him to a ‘confrontation with the unconscious’. As Europe tore itself apart, he gained first-hand experience of psychotic material in which he found ‘the matrix of a mythopoeic imagination which has vanished from our rational age’. As the war burnt out, he re-emerged into sanity, and considered that he had found in his madness ‘the primo materia for a lifetime’s work’.
The Laingian concept of hypersanity, though modern, has ancient roots. Once, upon being asked to name the most beautiful of all things, Diogenes the Cynic (d. 323 BCE) replied parrhesia, which in Ancient Greek means something like ‘uninhibited thought’, ‘free speech’, or ‘full expression’. Diogenes used to stroll around Athens in broad daylight brandishing an ignited lamp. Whenever curious people stopped to ask what he was doing, he would reply, "I am just looking for a human being"—thereby insinuating that the people of Athens were not living up to, or even much aware of, their full human potential.
Jung and Diogenes came across as insane by the standards of their day. But both men had a depth and acuteness of vision that their contemporaries lacked, and that enabled them to see through their facades of ‘sanity’. Both psychosis and hypersanity place us outside society, making us seem ‘mad’ to the mainstream. Both states attract a heady mixture of fear and fascination. But whereas mental disorder is distressing and disabling, hypersanity is liberating and empowering.
After reading The Politics of Experience, the concept of hypersanity stuck in my mind, not least as something that I might aspire to for myself. But if there is such a thing as hypersanity, the implication is that mere sanity is not all it’s cracked up to be, a state of dormancy and dullness with less vital potential even than madness. Many ‘normal’ people suffer from not being hypersane: they have a restricted worldview, confused priorities, and are wracked by stress, anxiety and self-deception. As a result, they sometimes do dangerous things, and become fanatics or otherwise destructive people. It is not just that the merely sane are irrational but that they lack scope and range, as though they’ve grown into the prisoners of their arbitrary lives, locked up in their own dark and narrow subjectivity. Unable to take leave of themselves, they hardly look around them, barely see beauty and possibility, rarely contemplate the bigger picture—and all, ultimately, for fear of losing themselves, of breaking down, of going mad, using one form of extreme subjectivity to defend against another, as life—mysterious, magical life—slips through their fingers.
We could all go mad, in a way we already are, minus the promise. But what if there were another route to hypersanity, one that, compared with madness, was less fearsome, less dangerous, and less damaging? What if, as well as a back door way, there were also a royal road strewn with sweet-scented petals.
This is a book about thinking, which, astonishingly, is barely taught in formal education. Our culture mostly equates thinking with logical reasoning, and the first few chapters examine logic, reason, their forms, and their flaws, starting with the basics of argumentation. But thinking is also about much more than logical reasoning, and so the book broadens out to examine concepts such as intelligence, knowledge, and truth, and alternative forms of cognition that our culture tends to overlook and underplay, including intuition, emotion, and imagination.
If Hypersanity fails to live up to its tall promise, it should at least make you into a better thinker. And so you can approach the book as an opportunity to hone your thinking skills, which, in the end, are going to be far more important to your impact and wellbeing than any facts that you could ever learn. As BF Skinner once put it, ‘Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.’
There is much more to mental health than the mere absence of mental disorder. Today, I write about all the things that I was never taught.
The Ataraxia Series
Neel is an incredibly insightful and elegant writer, with a deep knowledge of all he surveys. —James Davies, medical anthropologist and psychotherapist, author of Cracked
Burton’s writing blends deep knowledge of his subject with lively anecdote and a genuine concern for how we might draw on the insights of psychology and philosophy to live a better life. —Gareth Southwell, philosopher and writer
- The Meaning of Madness
- Hide and Seek
- Heaven and Hell
- For Better For Worse
- Hypersanity
- The Art of Failure
Neel Burton
Multi award-winning non-fiction author
Dr Neel Burton FRSA is a psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine-lover who lives and teaches in Oxford, England. He is a Fellow of Green-Templeton College in the University of Oxford, and the winner of the Society of Authors' Richard Asher Prize, the British Medical Association's Young Authors' Award, and the Medical Journalists' Association Open Book Award. His work regularly features in the likes of Aeon and Psychology Today and has been translated into several languages.
His books include:
- The Meaning of Madness: A Critical Guide to Mental Health and Illness
- Hide and Seek: The Psychology of Self-Deception
- Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions
- For Better For Worse: Essays on Love, Marriage, and More
- Hypersanity: Thinking Beyond Thinking
- The Art of Failure: The Anti Self-Help Guide
- The Meaning of Myth: With 12 Greek Myths Retold and Interpreted by a Psychiatrist
- The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and more...
The Ataraxia series
Six books to peace and power of mind.
In my work as a psychiatrist, I help to treat mental disorder—and, I’m delighted to say, most of the people I see do get better. But why stop here? I believe that there is much more to mental health than the mere absence of mental disorder. Mental health is not just about surviving, but about thriving, about developing and expressing our highest, fullest potential as human beings.
Before Christianity, there were, of course, the pagan gods, Zeus and Jupiter and their ilk. But, especially for the high-minded, there were also a number of philosophical schools, the major ones being Cynicism, Stoicism, Skepticism, and Epicureanism. Although each with its own outlook and method, all four schools aimed at the attainment of mental mastery and tranquillity, or ataraxia—making them, in my view, much more similar than different.
Ataraxia [Greek, ‘lack of disturbance’] is also the guiding principle of this series, with each book, like each philosophy, adopting a distinct but complementary approach to peace of mind: exploring the deep origins of our distress in The Meaning of Madness; guarding against the demons of self-deception in Hide and Seek; refining our emotions in Heaven and Hell; regulating our relations with others in For Better For Worse; developing our thinking skills in Hypersanity; and, finally, redefining our concept of success in The Art of Failure.
Although the series is numbered, each book can happily stand on its own—meaning that you can read just one or all six, and in whichever order you like.
Ataraxia is closely linked with eudaimonia, which is often translated as ‘happiness’ but which is, in fact, a much deeper, fuller, and richer concept, sometimes articulated in terms of flourishing, or living a life that is worthwhile and fulfilling.
The stakes could not be higher.
Editorial Reviews
Review
I've read many Neel Burton books. He's a wonderful writer and able to immerse you lightly in pretty heavy stuff. --Adrian Bailey, Vine Voice
★★★★★ There is more golden wisdom flowing from these pages than can be explained in an overview ... Highly recommended. --Grady Harp, Amazon.com Top 100 reviewer
★★★★★ What an intriguing book! It truly is a book that makes you think about thinking ... You will understand not only your own thinking better but also the thinking of others who matter in your world. --Jamie Bee, Amazon.com Top 50 Reviewer
Burton is never short of an interesting and sharp judgment.--Prof Peter Toohey, Psychology Today
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B07T3WCYQC
- Publisher : Acheron Press (June 15, 2019)
- Publication date : June 15, 2019
- Language : English
- File size : 8238 KB
- Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 212 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #871,068 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #255 in Epistemology (Kindle Store)
- #283 in Psychology of Creativity & Genius
- #810 in Cognitive Psychology (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
"There is much more to mental health than the mere absence of mental disorder. Today, I write about all the things that I was never taught."
Dr Neel Burton FRSA is a psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine-lover who lives and teaches in Oxford, England. He is a Fellow of Green-Templeton College in the University of Oxford, and the winner of several book prizes including, the feather in his cap, a Best in the World Gourmand Award. His work features regularly in the likes of Aeon and Psychology Today and has been translated into several languages. When he is not reading or writing, or imbibing, he enjoys cooking, gardening, skiing, learning languages, visiting museums and gardens, and travelling, especially to sunny wine regions.
His books include
★ In the Ancient Wisdom series
• The Meaning of Myth
• The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle
• Stoic Stories
• Indian Mythology and Philosophy
★ In the Ataraxia series
• The Meaning of Madness
• Hide and Seek: The Psychology of Self-Deception
• Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions
• For Better For Worse: Essays on Sex, Love, Marriage, and More
• Hypersanity: Thinking Beyond Thinking
• The Art of Failure: The Anti Self-Help Guide
★ Self-help books
• The Secret to Everything: How to Live More and Suffer Less
• Growing from Depression
★ Wine
• The Concise Guide to Wine and Blind Tasting
Blog and bio at www.neelburton.com
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The author would not have us get to Hypersanity by our current understanding of madness. Rather, he prefers us moving there through thinking. I will bet that you will agree with this approach. This is a book which will engender a lot of thinking in the reader. If you are like me, you want to stop as you read, and think about a new concept or a sub-concept or one that is in front of your nose, but you never acknowledged it ... until now.
The author presents us first with our customary rational methods of thinking and expressing, as comes for example, from a formal education. Some of these are: Logical Reasoning; Language; Rhetoric; Reason; Memory: Intelligence; Science and Knowledge. He then provides us with alternative forms of cognition which support rational methods, but which our current culture discounts or disregards, such as: Intuition, Emotion, and Imagination; Insight and Wisdom (Wisdom is knowing that you don’t know – think on it).
So how does all this relate to Hypersanity? “…. we ought to be rehabilitating alternative forms of cognition that can be used to support, supplement, or supplant logical reasoning and return us to wholeness.” Personally, I would aask you to read this book slowly enough, and seek resonance with the issues raised before moving on. You will, as the author promises “become a better thinker".
See how bright and smart the guy on the cover looks?
Recommended.
Neel Burton begins with simple explanations and builds to deeper thoughts and methods. Hypersanity: Thinking Beyond Thinking is for those who desire a more profound concept of life. His ideas are not what you would hear from an average author, his work is definitely above average. I did not understand everything he discussed in his book, though he presented his theories with a precise explanation. My favorite chapter was on fallacies. I will look deeper into how I read the news and the agenda they are pushing though they don’t line up with the facts.
After personally collecting a few degrees in the physical sciences and working in various analytics positions myself, Hypersanity is a refreshing reminder of the power of creativity and imagination, or in other words, the colorful world and life beyond math and science. Beyond a reminder, the book is simultaneously damning to the ambitious entrepreneurs pulling all-nighters in Silicon Valley to the chemical engineers at Exxon and every scientist, engineer, and dean of admissions in between who refuse to give mind that true intelligence and strength is more than Fourier transformations, eigenvectors, and artificial intelligence engineering. The prescription? Perhaps the answer lies in asking ourselves what exactly are we so busy trying to protect ourselves from to begin with.
This book will, quite literally, make you think. About thinking. It’s not as difficult of a concept as one might realize. Dr. Burton breaks down some of the facets of thinking such as arguments, fallacies, rhetoric, and much more. It helps you to understand that the concept of thinking is multifaceted and complex, but it doesn’t need to be difficult. The author breaks down his thoughts into several manageable chapters that you can read through at just about any pace.
His approach to writing this book will appeal to many people. It’s a very approachable style that educates you at an intelligent yet conversational level. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
Top reviews from other countries
Some suggestions that could have made this better: avoid references to object level politics. Dr. Burton occasionally uses contemporary, partisan and value laden politics to make his point, and it does him a disservice. The epistemic problems of the digital age go well beyond any hand wringing by the university educated about "fake news." For example, Dr. Burton joins others in disdaining the idea of "alternative facts" but the truth is that different facts can suggest different conclusions without being mutually incompatible! This is, in fact, an important aspect of the adversarial legal system, where different parties present different facts that support their preferred narrative. If you are trying to make timeless points about the human condition, avoid the temptation to provide takes about the politics of your day!
This book is also full of slightly mom-ish advice about how much sleep to get and how to look after oneself. It is not clear what this advice is based on, as it wisely avoids the "studies show" appeal to authority that every post-replication crisis book should avoid.
Finally, my main criticism is that he does not go deep enough into his own most interesting thesis. What is hyper sanity? What valuable mental states might exist on the other side of madness? Does reason base itself on some other, even more primordial ground of cognition?
My recommendation would be to read this book if you want a quick, easy run through western philosophy with an emphasis on logic and epistemology, but I am afraid it doesn't deliver much more than that.
Neel Burton cleverly weaves the curriculum of a medieval "classical education" (such as logic, rhetoric and music) with other metaphysical concepts (like truth, imagination and wisdom) to develop a theme of a inspired and purposeful life. A life that makes sense on a fundamental and personal level and not one of fitting in to societal expectations.
To do so, he draws on a broad array of sources from Plato and Jung to Donald Trump and Game of Thrones, making for an entertaining read. The overarching message is a hopeful: a joining of education, wisdom and imagination to create real meaning.
My only slight caution to the reader would be to follow the author's own advice at the start of Chapter 3 and skip straight to Chapter 5. Chapters 3 & 4 do come across as a mock exam, and I think distract from the crisp flow and clear elegance of the prose in the rest of the book.
Overall, I highly recommend Dr Burton's Hypersanity to those wishing to develop their own path to a meaningful life. In polarised and anxious times, what better calling can there be?
Involving how the different pieces are intertwined to make up the whole. Burton delves into history, arts, travel, culture, cinematography and budding societal events toward buttressing salient points.
Hypersanity wouldn’t serve as your regular novel, or book. It certainly wouldn’t serve as a diversion, or source of entertainment. However, it would represent a source of inspiration for those who are curious enough to want to think, and experience the borders of critical and analytical thinking.
My favorite phrase: “. . . that life is to be found in all of life; that life, at all times, is right in front of us, waiting to be lived.”
Kudos to the author.
C. H. Spurgeon said: "Discernment is not the ability to tell right from wrong. Discernment is the ability to tell right from almost right."
The title of this book is misleading for anyone interested in hyper sanity. That will become evident by reading this book.
The author claims it took "ten years of head scratching" to concoct this absolute hodgepodge of quotations taken from just anywhere he cared to look (except the Satanic Bible since, according to the author, Satan is "fantasy"), interspersed with his own thoughts; the result being this book full of "almost right." I'll be sure to use the pages of this book as kindling the next time I make a fire to grill some marshmallows.
For anyone in search of genuine hyper sanity, I recommend the KJV Bible.
Descartes said: "I think; therefore I am."
Myself: "God said BE! ... therefore I am."