Book Review: Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson
The only good thing is the pretty cover
Thomas Erikson’s best quote from the book is one that summarizes the premise of Surrounded by Idiots in a nutshell:
“The most important lesson that you can walk away with is that the idiots who surround you are, in fact, not idiots at all. Instead, they are individuals worthy of respect, understanding, and being valued.”
What I like about the book—though there weren’t many things I liked, as we shall see — is that Erikson makes some great points about human nature in general. In relation to explaining condescending behavior towards those different from us, he wrote:
“At the heart of this need for control is a belief that they know more than anyone else.”
Unfortunately, he just had to use astute realizations about human nature to justify unbased pseudoscience. It isn’t enough for him to observe the motivations behind why people do certain things in the workplace. That’ll actually be an interesting and more useful book, albeit a less clickbaity one.
He also wrote plenty of realizations about our own behavioral tendencies. This, for example, is a very perspicacious observation which many people overlook from themselves:
“Pressure, demands, and…
