Take 56

 

Another book that I read this week was Take Pride. It is a book about the elusive emotion of pride and it argues that there are two kinds of pride: the hubristic type displayed by jerks and the authentic type displayed by empathic, collaborative, feel-good people. Another interesting topic discussed in this book were the two ways in which people acquire social status. Some do it through displaying dominant behaviour like making people afraid of them, others by gathering prestige, in other words making sure that they are helpful and knowledgeable. I think in my country people climb the social ladder through dominance as the most knowledgeable members of society can be copied and left behind by social learning means, social learning that was also mentioned in the book. The book also covered narcissists, rejection which feels like physical pain and whether pride is a universal emotion or not. An interesting read but I couldn't give it more that three stars on Goodreads because it was repetitive and I wasn't quite sure that pride could be the secret to our success. More like luck and appearances.