Tuesday, 10 July 2018

The Art of the Good Life – Rolf Dobelli

This book carries the ambitious subtitle “52 Simple Shortcuts to Happiness”. When I see such a title in a book shop, I usually look away and don’t touch it. The book may fit well in a typical American book store. People may believe I can’t manage my own life and I may need help.

I had however heard at work of the author Rolf Dobelli and his first book “The Art of Thinking Clearly”. When you open the book, you notice the chapters are short and beautifully illustrated with colourful drawings. It contains a lot of simple but wise advice and it easily invites to further reading.

The book is written from a ‘high society’ perspective and some examples given may not appeal to everyone. With some of the 52 recommendations, you might even disagree, but I bet most people will agree with at least 48 out of 52 recommendations. I discovered that the joy of reading is also related to the fact that you were already aware of some of the pitfalls of postmodern life and you might even have taken measures already to overcome them.

You will find some of these pitfalls/ recommendations in previous blogs “The Delusion of Immanent Justice”, “Status Anxiety”, “Meritocracy”, “On Optimism and Pessimism”.

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