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    Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt
    Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt
    Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt
    Audiobook6 hours

    Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

    Written by Arthur C. Brooks

    Narrated by Will Damron

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    To get ahead today, you have to be a jerk, right?

    Divisive politicians. Screaming heads on television. Angry campus activists. Twitter trolls. Today in America, there is an “outrage industrial complex” that prospers by setting American against American.

    Meanwhile, one in six Americans have stopped talking to close friends and family members over politics. Millions are organizing their social lives and curating their news and information to avoid hearing viewpoints differing from their own. Ideological polarization is at higher levels than at any time since the Civil War.

    America has developed a “culture of contempt”—a habit of seeing people who disagree with us not as merely incorrect or misguided, but as worthless. Maybe you dislike it—more than nine out of ten Americans say they are tired of how divided we have become as a country. But hey, either you play along, or you’ll be left behind, right?

    Wrong.

    In Love Your Enemies, New York Times bestselling author and social scientist Arthur C. Brooks shows that treating others with contempt and out-outraging the other side is not a formula for lasting success. Blending cutting-edge behavioral research, ancient wisdom, and a decade of experience leading one of America’s top policy think tanks, Love Your Enemies offers a new way to lead based not on attacking others, but on bridging national divides and mending personal relationships.

    Brooks’ prescriptions are unconventional. To bring America together, he argues, we shouldn’t try to agree more. There is no need for mushy moderation, because disagreement is the secret to excellence. Civility and tolerance shouldn’t be our goals, because they are hopelessly low standards. And our feelings toward our foes are irrelevant; what matters is how we choose to act.

    Love Your Enemies is not just a guide to being a better person. It offers a clear strategy for victory for a new generation of leaders. It is a rallying cry for people hoping for a new era of American progress. And most of all, it is a roadmap to arrive at the happiness that comes when we choose to love one another, despite our differences.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMar 12, 2019
    ISBN9780062908155
    Author

    Arthur C. Brooks

    Dr. Arthur C. Brooks is a Professor of the Practise of Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and Arthur C. Patterson Faculty Fellow at the Harvard Business School. He is author of eleven books, including Love Your Enemies and The Road to Freedom. He is a columnist for the Washington Post, host of the podcast 'The Arthur Brooks Show,' and subject of the documentary film The Pursuit, currently streaming on Netflix.

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    Reviews for Love Your Enemies

    4.5/5

    68 ratings7 reviews

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    • 5/5
      The world needs more books like this. Republican, Democratic, Patriot, Progressive, whatever your thing....Read This Book.
    • 5/5
      Thoughtful discussion of connecting positively with those that believe differently than you.
    • 2/5
      Nothing earth shattering here. All stuff we should know and be doing.
    • 5/5
      A well balanced, honest, and productive conversation starter. I'm recommending this book to all of my right and left friends.
    • 4/5
      As far as I’m concerned this should be considered obvious, common-sense human decency. But obviously it isn’t. Well written, I think a bit better than Van Jones’ “Beyond the Messy Truth” which I’d put in exactly the same category. But both books would be perfectly understandable to a high school student, I think - I’d like to read something in this vein that was just a bit deeper.

      All that being said, I sure wish I lived in a world where a greater percentage of politicians, pundits, and other leaders subscribed to the ideas in these books.
    • 5/5
      Arthur Brooks writes a much-needed and accessible book for the individual seeking to be part of the solution to the canyons of mutual disregard that divide us, canyons widened by and for the powerful in media, politics, and anger.

      I recommend it heartily. Brooks is a business conservative, a religious man, a humanist, and a rebel. In sum, he is a man in full who takes his own medicine.

      He offers the following:

      How each person can help make national healing happen:

      1. Find a friendship with someone you can have productive, respectful disagreements.
      2. “Don’t attack or insult. Don’t even try to win.”
      3. “Never assume the motives of another person.”
      4. “Use your values as a gift, not a weapon.”
      P. 185-199

      Five rules to subvert the culture of contempt:

      1. ”Stand up to the Man. Refuse to be used by the powerful.... [B]e the person who gently defends those who aren’t represented, even if you disagree with them.”
      2. “Escape the bubble. Go where you’re not invited, and say things people don’t expect.” Seek common ground. Tell your story.
      3. “Say no to contempt. Treat others with love and respect, even when it’s difficult.”
      4. “Disagree better. Be part of a healthy competition of ideas.”
      5. “Tune out: Disconnect more from the unproductive debates....Obliterate your silos by listening, reading, and watching media on the ‘other side.’ Get rid of your curated social media feeds....Resolve to pay attention to ideas, not just politics.” P. 201-212
    • 4/5
      This message can't get out there enough. If there is one idea with which the whole of my being resonates, it is that compassion and understanding are the way forward from the current unspeakable mess that we have lately made of this country, which is the shame of my generation.

      Brooks' message has a lot in common with that of my boyfriend* Jonathan Haidt, of THE RIGHTEOUS MIND and THE CODDLING OF THE AMERICAN MIND. In fact he quotes and draws on Haidt's words and research. I recommend the above as companion volumes, particularly RIGHTEOUS MIND.

      I will be looking out for Brooks' column in the Washington Post from now on.

      * Jonathan Haidt is not actually my boyfriend. I use this term whenever I am madly in love with a particular author's work.