The book is up there with some of the best books I’ve ever read in terms of depth, accessibility and humour, but the content will only really appeal to people who are interested in rhetoric.
And the study of rhetoric is about as popular as Scientology.
The appetite for neuroscientism (Daniel Kahneman) or apocalyptic materialism (Yuval Noah Harari) seems to be insatiable, but I’m struggling to think who will buy Jay Heinrichs’ uplifting account of how he turned an epic mid-life crisis into a meditation on Greek metaphysics.
Why is science so popular and rhetoric (which I could stretch to mean: ‘being human’) so unpopular?
In rhetoric we learn the mechanics of persuasion.
In a world which is supposedly governed by rationality, the idea that someone can change your mind and get you to sign up to something you hadn’t planned to, is disconcerting.
There are good guys and bad guys out there, there is true news and fake news, there are alternative healers, who are unethical, and there are respected medical practitioners, who are ethical, right?
And we want AI to tell us what the answer is, not theories reminding us that it can be difficult to distinguish between the two.
We deeply want science to harden the solid ground we walk upon.
But rhetoric says that we see reality through glasses and we’re not even aware we’re wearing them.
What is more we perceive the external world through something as malleable and unpredictable as language.
What is more if we do something as simple as change our language, we can change our perception of reality and even our destiny.
Our society enthrones technical types – people who have an encyclopaedic knowledge of economics, medicine or computer science, and (no coincidence here) those people use language in rigid and colourless ways.
The Greeks had a deep suspicion of this kind of expertise.
They preferred generalists who became ‘word-wizards’. People who could stand up and move the people to action with their eloquence.
As a rhetorician, the most moving part of the book is when Heinrichs tells us we can’t know our purpose without words. We have to discover our deepest word-centric humanity.
But it gets worse from the perspective of those who can’t stand the liberal arts.
A hip injury knocks Jay’s confidence and reminds him of his mortality.
This inspires him to pursue a sporting goal involving extreme endurance.
He uses his rhetorical insights on himself (rather than an audience) to develop a program involving self-deprivation and early-mornings to achieve a goal of ‘hyperbolic’ proportions.
Jay creates his own superstitions, lucky charms and Tony-Robbins-style mantras to overcome his own psychological objections to the punishing regimen he sets himself.
You’ve got to align yourself with your soul, he tells us.
The book is more about the philosophy than it is about Jay’s quest. It’s written with the panache of a best-selling behavioural science guru and the wit of one of the great American satirists.
I’m now equipped to run up my own Mount Moosilauke. I’ll let everyone else look for the answer using AI.