Looking Out for #1

Customer Reviews

I'm not trying to lecture you, but to present Ringer's message in the best light. One reason I've found his book useful is that I've been both of those people I mentioned above. But I'm not anxious to discuss my own imperfections, so back to the book.

Ringer divides life into a series of "hurdles" that must be cleared in order to reach the "finish line" called success. The order in which these are presented may seem odd at first, but ultimately proves to make sense. For example, why put Friendship and Love after Finance, when many folks probably feel they'd like to take care of the basic human need for friendship and love first, then worry about finding gainful employment? Because of a basic rule that applies to all three situations, but is easiest to accept when seeking gainful employment -- that if you want someone to give you something of value, you have to offer them something of value. It makes more sense to introduce that rule in a context where the reader will accept it, then make the point that it applied in other areas where people don't expect it to.

My only quibble with the order of presentation concerns the chapter on crusades, which seems a bit like an intrusion -- although, to be fair, I'm not sure where I'd have put it.

And I feel the book has two other, bigger problems. First, it seems slanted toward men. This comes across partly in many of the examples, and partly in the coarseness of some of the language. Okay, so there are plenty of women out there who indulge in coarse language as well, but if you;re gonna publish a book, which is presumably aimed at the entire country, you gotta think of the big picture. Even if coarse language doesn't indicate gender bias, it indicates some kind of bias.

The second, and more serious problem is that Ringer is essentially an articulate layman, which means that he (a) may not be qualified to make some of the statements he makes, and (b) lacks (or at least fails to demonstrate) an understanding of how his philosophy fits into the established body of ethical and psychological thought.

The example of (a) that really jumped out at me was the statement that you shouldn't stay in a bad relationship because of children, since children will be worse off growing up with two unhappy parents than with a single parent. Intuitively, this makes sense, but I would act on it without consulting a few child psychologists and/or looking up the statistics.

Regarding (b), Ringer appears first of all to be unaware that the ethical system of rational selfishness is one of three recognized systems. The other two are (1) do what's most beneficial to the greatest number of people, and (2) assume there is a set of absolute moral rules and do what they tell you. Ringer might have had more credibility of he'd acknowledge these systems and defended rational selfishness against them.

But the real killer is that the assumption on which he bases the entire book has been shown to be flawed. This is the assumption that everybody seeks to act in his/her own best interest all the time, even when this appears not to be so. The flaw in that assumption lies in its apparent flawlessness. Every hypothetical situation you can dream up can be explained in terms of the assumption being true. One of Ringers examples is a man who goes to a flower show with his wife instead of doing something he'd rather do. This man is acting in his own best interest because he figures the pleasure he'd get from whatever he wanted to do is outweighed by the trouble he'll be in if he doesn't go to the flower show.

Well, it turns out that because you can't devise a situation that would prove the assumption false, you can't devise a truly reliable test of its validity. Such a test consists of s situation in which there will definitely be one outcome if the assumption is true, and another outcome if the assumption is false. You can't set up such a situation if every possible outcome of every possible situation indicates that the assumption is true.

But that doesn't make book is worthless. The problem I just pointed out occurs only if you read Ringer's statement as an unqualified, all encompassing assumption. If you soften it to something like "Most people should be expected to be motivated by self-interest most of the time," that's another story.

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