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    Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril
    Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril
    Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril
    Ebook415 pages7 hours

    Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril

    By Margaret Heffernan

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    About this ebook

    “With deft prose and page after page of keen insights, Heffernan shows why we close our eyes to facts that threaten our families, our livelihood, and our self-image--and, even better, she points the way out of the darkness.” --Daniel H. Pink

     In the tradition of Malcolm Gladwell and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Margaret Heffernan's Willful Blindness is a tour de force on human behavior that will open your eyes.

    Why, after every major accident and blunder, do we look back and say, How could we have been so blind? Why do some people see what others don't? And how can we change? Drawing on studies by psychologists and neuroscientists, and from interviews with business leaders, whistleblowers, and white collar criminals, distinguished businesswoman and writer Margaret Heffernan examines the phenomenon of willful blindness, exploring the reasons that individuals and groups are blind to impending personal tragedies, corporate collapses, engineering failures-even crimes against humanity.

    We turn a blind eye in order to feel safe, to avoid conflict, to reduce anxiety, and to protect prestige. But greater understanding leads to solutions, and Heffernan shows how-by challenging our biases, encouraging debate, discouraging conformity, and not backing away from difficult or complicated problems-we can be more mindful of what's going on around us and be proactive instead of reactive.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury USA
    Release dateMar 1, 2011
    ISBN9780802777959
    Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril
    Author

    Margaret Heffernan

    Margaret Heffernan is an entrepreneur, chief executive, and author. She was born in Texas, raised in Holland, and educated at Cambridge University. She worked for the BBC and developed interactive multimedia products with Peter Lynch, Tom Peters, Standard & Poors, and The Learning Company. She has served as Chief Executive Officer for InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation, and iCAST Corporation. The author of Beyond Measure, Willful Blindness, and A Bigger Prize, among others, she blogs for HuffPost, CBS Moneywatch, and Inc.com.

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    • 5/5
      This book should be required reading for every college business and environmental student. If there is a way to save our present society, an understanding of this material will be a crucial part of it. Understanding why we individually, and as groups, see only what we want or expect to see, opens the possibility of avoiding the disasters that seem to be allied with modern society.
    • 5/5
      This book is about the way in which we go along with things; the way in which we fail to take control. Heffernan looks at the BP crisis, the mortgage disaster and many other crises. In many cases there were people who had access to information that made clear the scale of a disaster, or its likelihood. They chose to ignore the facts: why? In most cases, not because of criminal fraud, but because they did not feel strong enough to stand up to authority or, even more disturbingly, in a lot of cases, they felt that authority must be right.Reading this book is a bit like being asked what you would do faced by a homicidal maniac waving a gun at an innocent child: the answer is that one would leap at the miscreant, wrestle the gun from his hands and make a citizen's arrest. In reality, would one do that, or decide that such actions would "endanger the child" and thus leave one, reluctantly (relieved?) to let matters proceed? When I started reading I was thinking, "I don't believe that people could be as silly as to behave like this." As I progressed through the book, my reaction changed to an acceptance that other people could be so foolish and, as I approached the end, I finally allowed that, in the right (or wrong) circumstances, I would do as these people had done.This is not a critical book. It does not belittle the people who failed to act, it examines the reasons and challenges the reader to, hand on heart, say that they would have done differently. Having read this, I wish that I could say that, even if I might have done some of these things previously, I am now immune. I cannot. What I can say is that I am armed with the information as to how to recognise the warning signs and, were everybody so to be, the World would be a better place. This book is required reading by... well, everyone.

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    Willful Blindness - Margaret Heffernan

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