Nobel laureate Doris Lessing delivered a series of five essays at CBC Massey Lectures in 1985 which were compiled by Harper Collins Publishers a year later in the form of a book titled ‘Prisons We Choose To Live Inside’.
Introduction
Book’s Name - Prisons We Choose To Live Inside
Author’s Name - Doris May Lessing
Genre - Non-fiction
Language - English
Synopsis - Spoiler Alert!
The celebrated author, Doris May Lessing probes nontraditional ways to perceive ourselves and the society we live in, meanwhile giving us novel answers to enduring questions of how to think for ourselves and comprehend what we know.
In these brief essays, Lessing confronts the most pressing conundrum of all—that with all the wondrous leaps of scientific and psychological knowledge since the Enlightenment, we still steer onto the same well-trodden paths of error.
The essays are compiled under the following heads:
When In the Future They Look Back On Us
You Are Damned, We Are Saved
Switching Off to See ‘Dallas’
Group Minds
Laboratories of Social Change
About the Author
Doris May Lessing (22 October 1919- 17 November 2013) was a woman with strong political inclinations and ambitions. Described as “that epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny”, she has written the novels The Grass Is Singing and The Golden Notebook among many others.
This English lady was a novelist, playwright, poet, biographer, short story writer and librettist, and because of her such versatile abilities, the phrase impossible to pigeonhole was often used whenever she was being referred to. She actively combated the employment of nuclear arms and campaigned against apartheid.
She also openly exhibited her views on feminism and communism. She has been quoted as saying, “There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children,” on being questioned on leaving her children behind to pursue her political goals.
Much of her works have been shaped through personal sociopolitical encounters which she then applies to a broader milieu, which is one of the reasons why her writings are so widely appreciated and revered.
About the Book
Throughout the essays, the author follows a common theme of looking at individualism from a broader perspective. The book is aptly titled because according to Lessing, we often lock ourselves away in the prisons of our thoughts; not letting anything even remotely foreign or new.
These dark and dreary cells of conventional thinking do not permit innovative and pristine ideas to take form, thus, hindering the forward movement of society as a whole. It is immensely crucial for us all to break free and allow ideas to germinate.
The author advocates the indispensability of the disciplines of history and literature. We must learn to adopt the detached view of the historians and authors, segregate from the ‘group mind’ and look at ourselves and our atmosphere more candidly and objectively.
She lectures on the questions of autonomy and individual liability in a world that is increasingly inclining to political rhetoric, mass emotions and manifest structures of unquestioned belief.
Psychological Analysis
A perceptive, well-argued plea for the individuality of thought in an age of mass emotions, brainwashing, indoctrination, and social conditioning. In her quest to establish the essentiality of the so-called ‘soft sciences’, Lessing adopts an approach that is both empirical and philosophical.
She examines historical patterns in her search for organizing principles and attempts to uncover universal truths concerning modes of thought and governments, such as socialism, communism, capitalism, and democracy.
Famous Quotes
‘All history, development goes on through interaction and mutual influence, and even the most violent extremes of thought, of behavior, become woven into the general texture of human life, as one strand of it.’
‘Of course, there are original minds, people who do take their own line, who do not fall victim to the need to say, or do, what everyone else does. But they are few. Very few. On them depends on the health, the vitality of all our institutions.’
‘Often the mass emotions are those which seem the noblest, best and most beautiful. And yet, inside a year, five years, a decade, five decades, people will be asking, "How could you have believed that?" because events will have taken place that will have banished the said mass emotions to the dustbin of history.’
‘We are all of us, to some degree or another, brainwashed by the society we live in. We are able to see this when we travel to another country, and are able to catch a glimpse of our own country with foreign eyes.. the best we can hope for is that a kindly friend from another culture will enable us to look at our culture with dispassionate eyes.’
The Bottom Line
Doris Lessing forces her audience to reflect and to introspect. As someone as much new to the works of Doris Lessing as to the field of political science, I thoroughly enjoyed the essays and found them extremely luminiferous and simple to comprehend.
This compilation is as much for the general public as for a student of political science. The essays, replete with events and examples from history, are generously sprinkled with great wit and sarcasm which makes them a delightful and simultaneously insightful read.
My Ratings for the Book - 3.5 on 5
Get your copy from Amazon - Prisons We Choose to Live Inside
Written By - Aishanya Nigam
Edited By - Pavas Shrigyan
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