I wonder what I would have made of this series of lectures if I had listened to them when they were given in 1985 – at a time when I was one of the young people Lessing refers to here, one assured of certain certainties. My best guess is that I would have rejected her as a reactionary. Now virtually everything she says seems to be self-evidently the case.When we are young we believe we can change the world – we look about ourselves and see that the world is dysfunctional and we believe that we c...

Quite visionary taking into account this series of lectures was delivered in 1985.

I really enjoyed this collection of 5 essays, which were part of a CBC Radio Massey Lecture series in 1985 They were not only fascinating but they also really challenged my thinking. Lessing’s main premise is that although this generation knows more about themselves than any other, they are not utilizing that information to better their lives: "I believe that people coming after us will marvel that on the one hand we accumulated more and more info about our behaviour, while on the other, we made...

I loved this book like I loved Orwell's Homage to Catalonia and his collection All Art Is Propaganda , like I loved Emma Goldman's Anarchism and Other Essays , like I loved George Saunders' The Braindead Megaphone . Prisons We Choose to Live Inside is a set of Doris Lessing's lectures and expresses her worldview concerning the persistent conflict between individuals and governments. Having grown up in Rhodesia, Lessing lived in a society where a white minority ruled over a black maj...

Prisons We Choose to Live Inside, Doris LessingDoris May Lessing CH OMG (Born: October 22, 1919, Kermanshah, Iran, Died: November 17, 2013, London, United Kingdom) was a British-Zimbabwean novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925.Prisons We Choose to Live Inside is a collection of five essays by the British writer Doris Lessing, which were previously delivered as the 1985 Massey Lectures. The five collected essays are generally meant to be read in order thoug...

Lessing advances an important and clearly stated argument -- that modern social sciences have revealed the depth to which unconcious tendencies for group-think, blind conformism, confirmation bias and irrational tribalism govern the behaviour of supposedly rational, sane and free individuals; and that niether society as a whole, nor those portions of society who claim to be concerned about liberty, freedom and democracy, have made use of the the discoveries of science, or show the least interest...

A clear-sighted, well-argued plea for individuality of thought in an age of mass emotions and social conditioning.Doris Lessing has faith in the power of writers to stay detached from these mass emotions and "enable us to see ourselves as others see us." I like the image she gives of writers as a collective organism, constantly evolving but always providing this same crucial function of detached examination of the human condition.There are some fascinating passages on the way mass emotions are c...

A great feminist, brilliant thinker, and one of my favorite writers. (The Grass Is Singing is AMAZING.) I wish I'd read her when I was younger and thought about things more deeply then, in the 80s, when she wrote these pieces. Deep, insightful, thought provoking pieces on individuality, group think, political movements, history, etc. which still ring true today. Which is actually kind of sad that we can't seem to learn from our mistakes. I'm going to reread this one every few years for inspirati...

We’re all dupes. The book reminds me of when I was at the supermarket with my wife. Pulling a product from the shelf, I said: “I hear this is good.” “Where’d you hear that,” she asked, looking at me skeptically. Sheepishly placing the item back, I answered: “In a commercial.”

Coming back to give this another star because if I can think of one book that’s kept me sane over the last few years, it’s this. Having a bad day? Open this book. See the umpteenth social media pile-on or a “whaaaa?” in the news? This book. See someone get hundreds of likes for saying that the Puritans were right to slap Hester w/ a big red letter (true story)? This. Book. With an immediate chaser of Carl Dreyer’s Day of Wrath.It’s total comfort in the absence of comfort. Constantly questioning

"This is a time when it is frightening to be alive, when it is hard to think of human beings as rational creatures. Everywhere we look we see brutality, stupidity, until it seems that there is nothing else to be seen but that--a descent into barbarism, everywhere, which we are unable to check. But I think that while it is true there is a general worsening, it is precisely because things are so frightening we become hypnotized, and do not notice--or if we notice, belittle--equally strong forces o...

Doris Lessing was born in Persia but raised in Southern Rhodesia, present day Zimbabwe. Her living and witnessing the brutal racism by the white colonialists in Zimbabwe against the black population awakened her activism against colonialism and oppressive structures which in turn influenced her writing. In this series of essays Doris Lessing examines how and why societies revert back to cruelties and authoritarianism after years of progress.There's a particular description of Margaret Thatcher's...

Excellent commentary on politics, media and life in general. Great short read on human psychology and the prisons we choose, as well as the keys to escape.

Seventy-six pages of the most clear-minded writing I've read on "the human condition." Doris Lessing's assessment of our failure to apply what we've learned in social psychology, anthropology and sociology to how we conduct ourselves individually and as a culture is both bracing and deeply enriching. This is my second reading of the book in ten years and it has left me understanding even more about what it means to be human. I can't recommend this book enough.

3.5 A collection of essays detailing the politics that were going on in the world in post WW2. Doris Lessing provides 5 essays that give great insight into the minds of people. She doesn't hesitate to be bold and in her own stylistic way she makes any reader question the world they take for granted. The main theme in this book was on restrictions/boundaries/prisons (call it what you want) that we place on ourselves. Lessing questions the restrictions we put on ourselves whether willingly or unwi...

I can see that she's sharp. Unfortunately, this is one of those books where the ideas are so general that nothing much of interest is said. I don't mean to pick on Lessing, but this is a typical sort of book published by someone after they've achieved what they wanted to achieve in life - they stop talking about anything specific. I went to a talk by a Nobel prize winner in chemistry and his talk was much the same. Blah blah blah, schools need to change, children are the future, war is bad and t...

I really didn’t think I’d ever read this book. I bought it because it was cheap and I kind of like Doris Lessing, but as soon as I started reading it, I was hooked and read straight through. The book consists of transcripts from five lectures about politics and history, but are mostly about how to think independently and not get trapped by partisan fervor on the right or left. Sounds boring. It wasn’t, to me.

This is a very heavy book. I actually read it twice, it is short enough. Lots to think about. Would have liked to belong to a group and get in some great discussions about her theories.

Interesting I give this four stars (I give very few four stars), Lessing would challenge me as to why I'd rate this one so - because of the content, or because it's Lessing? The version I read was from the CBC Massey Lectures 1986. Found it to be a timely read, having just completed Restorative Justice program, with last course focusing on restorative practices in community development - 'community' being a concept both Lessing and I interrogate. Though she is writing mid-80s, and sounds like sh...

The kind of book that needs to be read every year. It's going to be everybody's Christmas present this year. From the final (heavily dog-eared) essay, Laboratories of Social Change: "One way of looking at the last two and a half centuries is that they have been laboratories of social change." "To my mind the whole push and thrust and development of the world is towards the more complex, the flexible, the open-minded, the ability to entertain many ideas, sometimes contradictory ones, in one's min...