If you are interested in human beings like I am, you are going to love this book. The book talks about habituation, not something a lot of people talk about, not something that I had heard of but something that every single one of us.
Habituation is essentially our ability as humans to block things out and stop taking notice once they become part of our everyday life and it has become apparent that they do not present a threat to us in our existence. This book is so interesting, and written in a way that everyone, and I really do mean everyone can not only relate to it, but more importantly learn from it.
It goes into a number of areas but in short they book will open your eyes as to why habituation happens, when it is good for you and when it is bad for you, when to let this phenomena take over for your own benefit and well being, and when it can actually put you in harms way. It gives you a deeper understanding of what I assumed was more the subconscious mind, why we do things and why we don’t, but from a totally different angle.
I read a lot of books like this that come from a more scientific angle and often find them quite hard going, often reading something else at the same time to break up the overload of information I am receiving. But with Look Again I literally could not put it down, a real “page turner” as they call it, I read the whole thing in 4 days, which with my schedule is incredible. I actually stopped doing things I would normally do to get back to this.
Like most things, habituation comes from our brains that still function in a way that perhaps does not fit with our current society, it was designed to keep us alive, and get us fed over millions of year, reading this book you understand the history of the brain, why it has evolved this way it has, which is all very simple and makes total sense, we just don’t need a lot of those things now.
I think it is the way they relate this topic to the things you do every day, from eating ice cream, to monogamy all the way through to technology and the use of our phones, which is very new in our world in the grand scheme of evolution. And not only do you understand how habituation keeps you going back to your phone when you know you shouldn’t, or even why you eat ice cream at night whilst watching TV, but it gives you guides as to how to break these cycles, and when to use habituation to your advantage.
It really does open your eyes to many things that happen in our society and why humans as a race behave the way we do, every part of our core functions such as lying and also on the other side of the coin our beliefs, whilst also explaining that if we are self-aware, we can overcome some of the limits that our brains put on us. It gives you examples of people who broke the chains that habituation can impose on us.
This book will give you real advice on how we can appreciate the things around us more that we should whilst also helping us from settling for things that are not good enough. Anyone who is looking to improve themselves, their relationships, the way they live should read this, it is a totally new angle I have never read before on why we are like we are and how to make ourselves better through simple understanding and awakening.
I finished this in December 2023 and I would say it was one of the best books I have read this year.
