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Staying Sane in a Crazy World
Staying Sane in a Crazy World is a fresh and somewhat outrageous new approach to the search for meaning in life. In an age when it is fashionable to give people answers that they want to hear but cannot use, Sherwin Wine provides less fashionable-but more effective-answers to the fundamental issues of the human condition. It is a guide to rational living.
276 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 27, 2014
In part, this responds to a theodicy (theological outlook in response to the problem of evil) that was popularly exemplified in When Bad Things Happen to Good People. That book maintained that God is benevolent and thus is a presence to which humans can turn for comfort, but that God simply lacks the power to prevent all suffering. God is not omnipotent.
Sherwin Wine takes a far different approach. Terrible and absurd accidents happen. The universe isn't fair, and there is no God to sort it out. We must stay "realistic" and "strong" – two words he uses a lot and defines at length. ”Painful truth is better in the end than painless fantasy,” he writes. When smitten with misfortune, the best we can do is to accept that it is a kind of coincidence. These are the benefits: Fortunate people won’t feel smug with the misbegotten belief that they did something to deserve their privilege, unfortunate people won’t feel guilty that they brought punishment down upon themselves, and no one will waste time inventing contorted theological explanations for why accidents happen.
Basically it is a worldview I can endorse, and it is quite clearly expressed.
I did feel that the argument was heavily weighted toward an interpretation of suffering as "accident" or "coincidence." Some suffering is due to unavoidable bits of chaos exploding from the popcorn maker in the center of the galaxy, but much suffering is due to human action, whether through cruelty, ignorance, or just inefficiency. That kind is not a cosmic accident; it is potentially under our control. For explorations of how one begins to comprehend how and why humans cause our own suffering, there is Why Good People Do Bad Things: Understanding Our Darker Selves and my simultaneous recent read Life Code: The New Rules For Winning in the Real World. The latter, by Dr. Phil, comes to mind because Dr. Phil was also speaking of strength in adversity, but he was referring to maintaining one's self-respect and holding one's own in negotiations and other social interactions to prevent getting railroaded by manipulative people, while the sort of inner strength that Sherwin Wine is talking about is an existential equanimity that one has to draw upon when confronted with disappointing or tragic facts that one cannot control.
Sherwin Wine takes a far different approach. Terrible and absurd accidents happen. The universe isn't fair, and there is no God to sort it out. We must stay "realistic" and "strong" – two words he uses a lot and defines at length. ”Painful truth is better in the end than painless fantasy,” he writes. When smitten with misfortune, the best we can do is to accept that it is a kind of coincidence. These are the benefits: Fortunate people won’t feel smug with the misbegotten belief that they did something to deserve their privilege, unfortunate people won’t feel guilty that they brought punishment down upon themselves, and no one will waste time inventing contorted theological explanations for why accidents happen.
Basically it is a worldview I can endorse, and it is quite clearly expressed.
I did feel that the argument was heavily weighted toward an interpretation of suffering as "accident" or "coincidence." Some suffering is due to unavoidable bits of chaos exploding from the popcorn maker in the center of the galaxy, but much suffering is due to human action, whether through cruelty, ignorance, or just inefficiency. That kind is not a cosmic accident; it is potentially under our control. For explorations of how one begins to comprehend how and why humans cause our own suffering, there is Why Good People Do Bad Things: Understanding Our Darker Selves and my simultaneous recent read Life Code: The New Rules For Winning in the Real World. The latter, by Dr. Phil, comes to mind because Dr. Phil was also speaking of strength in adversity, but he was referring to maintaining one's self-respect and holding one's own in negotiations and other social interactions to prevent getting railroaded by manipulative people, while the sort of inner strength that Sherwin Wine is talking about is an existential equanimity that one has to draw upon when confronted with disappointing or tragic facts that one cannot control.
August 23, 2016
Gee, it was all going so well. The reading of this was was basically confirming the positive things I've been thinking about Humanistic Judaism and Sherwin Wine in general: about the "grand illusion", secularism, atheism, etc. Never mind that Wine is not a very well-organized writer who tends to ramble. But when he got to the part about art and its place and purpose, he went over the edge. A totally retrograde, borderline reactionary view of modern and contemporary art in all its manifestations. Too bad.
February 22, 2011
It was very good and the insights were spot on. This is a Christian book in case some people are wondering if this is a total book on pop psychology.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews