In Praise of Prejudice - 9781594032028

So what is your most useful prejudice? Is it sitting down to a family dinner every night? Staying married? Eating right? Dalrymple, a retired physician and psychiatrist whose clientele included inmates of English prisons, reminds us that the concept of "prejudice" has been changed entirely from a set of socially acceptable mores to hostile and irrational judgment of a group of people or ideas. He reminds us that without some degree of prejudice, in the positive sense, most of us would simply grind to a halt. He also opines that prejudices prevents people from trying to juggle abstract first principles and coming to conclusions that are actually harmful to themselves and others. Further, he argues, no one, or at least no one who lives in the real world, can be entirely without prejudice. The result is edgy, witty and convincing. Well, almost. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)