The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

Review

Your motives(yes you) really aren't as pretty and prosocial as you pretend they are. One of the most uncomfortable and difficult things to become self-aware of is your own selfishness. This book makes you stare at the ugly elephant of selfish motives entrenched with self-deception behind everything from laughter and conversation to art and education. In the end, I found myself a little too much in these pages... Continued self-deception has its uses as outlined in this book, but I still believe the truth(reading this book) and self-awareness is worth the cost. While this cynical perspective is overplayed in a few cases, it has become the defining way I view conversation(signal of intelligence) and laughter(play signal). “People have two reasons to do something, a good reason and the real reason”. “Wear a mask long enough and it becomes your face”. “If you wanna tell people the truth make them laugh, otherwise they will kill you”