A review by casciocj75
The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change your Life and Achieve Real Happiness by Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga

3.0

I was not familiar with Adler and found the ideas interesting and worth considering as a framework that may be useful to an individual, but also entirely theoretical without any connection to our current understanding of neuroscience and human behavior. Some of the examples, particularly the one about non-suicidal self injury, were just offensive in their total disregard for current knowledge (i.e., all behavior asserted to be entirely attributable to its (perhaps subconscious) desired effects on others, when we know that it occurs in traumatized animals in isolation). I think these ideas could be a useful tool for many, particularly embracing the reality that you are not responsible for other people’s reactions to you if you are being true to your own principles, and that every life is valuable regardless of what capitalism has brainwashed us to think of as “achievement.” I also found the idea of thinking of our lives as a series of moments (“dances”) rather than a linear sequence, to be very freeing, encouraging living the present moment to its fullest and making room for change throughout the lifespan. The device of using dialogue between the younger and older philosopher felt forced and awkward, but did make it easy to introduce each principle and integrate it with those preceding.