Review of
Instaread Summary of The Gift of Fear Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence by
Gavin de Becker
Three out of five stars
This book is based on what I consider to be a disingenuous
statement that appears on the first page of text in the summary. This is summed
up in the two sentences, “After violent episodes, observers often will remark
that they didn’t think the offender was capable of committing a criminal act,
such as stalking, domestic abuse, or even assassination. Yet the perpetrator
always sends out warning signals that precede violence, which are often
noticeable in retrospect.” The first sentence sets the subject matter, while
the second is packed with questionable content.
The first
section of the second sentence establishes an absolute “always,” while the
second section uses the much more uncertain “often.” As any person schooled in
logic knows, any conditional statement where the consequence is true is true.
In other words, all that is needed to interpret the signal as a warning of a
potential hostile action is to have the
fact of the violent act. This is a logically meaningless tautology.
The purpose of the book is to give the reader advice
on how to make themselves a “tough target” for those that want to commit
violent acts. While some of this is effective and should be followed, arguments
in the summary used to convince the reader are weak.
Key takeaway
two contains a lengthy anecdote regarding a woman and her having a “bad feeling”
about a cab right before she entered it. The cab rear-ended another while she
was in it, “justifying” the reliance on intuition in keeping yourself safe.
Once again, this is the “recollection” of having a “bad feeling” where the bad
feeling felt before the accident is recollected after the accident. Once again,
logically meaningless.
Key takeaway 6 is
about abused children being more likely to be violent. There is the use of the
example of football player Ray Rice, the man made famous by punching his wife
out in an elevator. Some of the trauma of Rice’s childhood is cited, but this
is nowhere near any hard evidence of a cause and effect. The description of
Rice comes across as a nonsensical reference to a celebrity event where it is
difficult to see the connection to making the reader safe.
Anybody can
claim to be the possessor of precognitive skills after the event occurs, for
then all interpretations of earlier events can be manipulated into being
considered a warning sign. The content of the book is taken from the author’s
years as a personal security consultant, one would think that the author of
this summary could come up with better anecdotes than this.
Making people
paranoid and afraid is not a path to a higher level of personal security, it is
a road to mindless and irrational fear of everything (FOE). It is also a way to
sell more books. I will not be reading this one.
This book was made available for free for review
purposes.
No comments:
Post a Comment