Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril

Every thinking person knows that humans tend to "put their heads in the sand" when they don't like the facts in front of them, even if they have a hard time admitting this fault in themselves. The book's author, Margaret Heffernan, takes this well known phenomenon and delves deep, and from many angles, to show us what is going on in the human psyche when this happens, which apparently is all the time, and from this helps not us not only to see how others fall into this trap, but more importantly, what is going on in our own brains when we do the same thing.The major goal of this book is not just to explain why this aspect of human behavior happens, but to show why turning our eyes away from uncomfortable facts is such a bad thing for everyone involved. She does this by employing hindsight to see the huge mess that was made in many large scale examples. But she does not forget to mention how this behavior also helps us as social animals to work together. The nuance of this conundrum is not lost on her.Her background is in the business world, so she uses many examples from this sphere, along side applicable studies from psychology and neuroscience to demonstrate various aspects if willful blindness. She does go into other areas of human society, but business is what she seems to understand best, so it is not a problem that she spends a lot of time there. I'm guessing that because of this focus, this book will become popular among people in business and management, as it should.My only disappointment is not with the author or the material, but with annoying fact that this aspect of the human brain seems to be a permanent defect that will exhibit itself in every future generation. Our only defense is to try to mitigate its effects by education and awareness. It will be an ongoing battle, but as with all such books on human behavior, it helps us understand ourselves better, and the more we understand how our own brain can steer us in wrong directions the more we can avoid the traps we unknowingly set for ourselves.So that is about the content, but I also enjoyed Ms. Heffernan's writing. The book flowed well and kept me very engaged. With many books of this ilk, I find myself reading several chapters, then putting the book down for a few weeks before getting around to finishing it. With this book I found myself being drawn back to it every evening until I finished. It is a good read.Bottom Line: The human brain is a tricky thing to operate. We need all the help we can get. "Willful Blindness" is a book that gives such us help. I hope this book finds a wide audience.

If I could, I would make this book required reading for every public official, and certainly everyone involved in emergency preparedness, disaster response, and continuity planning. I started rereading this book recently, and then the Nepal earthquake struck.Margaret Heffernan makes a strong case for how we make ourselves more vulnerable and less powerful by refusing to see what is right in front of us. America's multi-billion dollar dysfunctional relationship with emergency preparedness might well be called one of the most widespread and persistent examples of our willingness to ignore a situation to our own peril. Heffernan writes "...the Challenger explosion, the poorly coordinated response to Hurricane Katrina, climate change—can only happen when individuals and organizations turn a blind eye to what they know."Throughout the book Margaret Heffernan provides example after example, where regular people -- not crazed haters of humanity -- simply avoided being present to realities, and it cost us dearly. The stories of the Bernie Madoff fraud and scandal, ENRON, BP's Deepwater Horizon and their Texas City Oil Refinery explosion, and so many other disasters are FILLED with people who didn't speak up, claimed to be unaware, accepted the status quo, etc.Countless people in positions of authority in emergency preparedness and disaster response all across the country, but particularly in disaster-prone regions could be featured in any sequel to this book. Like so many people in Willful Blindness, they ignore the research on the efficacy of preparedness programs, and they continue to promote and put forth brochures, binders, pamphlets, classes, campaigns and trainings they know have never worked. Beyond the waste, and beyond the fact that people will suffer from the lack of preparedness, some know that this material is actually harmful* and they know that other less costly/more effective solutions exist. Willful Blindness gives us language to describe and discuss this phenomenon.Heffernan is careful to not paint bystanders and others remaining willfully ignorant as monsters. She, in fact, acknowledges the benefits derived by not confronting hard and distressing issues, and she gives high praise to the "Cassandras" -- the people who cannot leave the truth unknown.If you are a Cassandra for the topic of community emergency preparedness, Willful Blindness is filled with quality examples and a good dose of hope. This book could help people to find the courage to speak up, or provide more compelling arguments against our status quo lack of preparedness, and it's also an easy and thought-provoking read.* Two papers related to the detriments of fear- and threat-based messages in emergencies and disasters. http://cardcanhelp.org/images/I-Cant-Hear-You020915-Final.pdf and http://cardcanhelp.org/images/public-perception-of-disaster-preparedness-Rocky-Lopes.pdf

This is a powerful book!Former producer for BBC Radio and TV, former CEO of several multimedia companies, and current writer Margaret Heffernan gives a vivid portrayal of willful blindness.Willful blindness, she proposes, "is part of the human condition" (page 222). It contributes to personal tragedies, corporate collapses, and crimes against humanity. She brings all of these alive with dramatic vignettes including the response of officials during and after Hurricane Katrina, the explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig, the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, and others. She supports her proposition with studies by psychologists and neuroscientists and interviews of people who have witnessed and participated in willful blindness such as Cynthia Thomas who started the Under the Hood Cafe to offer soldiers at Fort Hood military base a place to hang out, Sherron Watkins who wrote to Enron chairman Ken Lay detailing accounting problems she could not resolve, Gillian Tett who predicted the problems at Northern Rock, and others. Her vignettes and the studies supporting them are captivating and persuasive.She does not leave us in that morass, however. After proposing that we all experience willful blindness, she contends that "it need not define who we are" (page 222). She then offers practical steps for what we can do to be attuned to it and to be on guard against it.This book is valuable as we live into the twenty-first century where we must face what we do not want to see about the perils of our planet. It gives us positive steps to avoid willful blindness about our personal contributions to these perils.

Although, this book ends up reading like a list of mistakes made through the ages, it is still and really important read. We can all be blind. Society can be blind. Politician can be blind. Doctors can be blind (scary). Buisnesses can be blind. What is more, if you point it out, then you often get trouble. All very relevant for today and the future I am afraid.

Wilful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at our peril – Margaret HeffernanMargaret Heffernan has an interesting and chequered background. Worked for BBC – produced films – ran public affair campaigns – built and sold internet companies and also authored half a dozen books which were well reviewed and are bestsellers.The subject was right up my street. After having read ‘ Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational behavior ‘ by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman and ‘Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People’ by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald – anybook on why otherwise normal,rational and intelligent people go away from the straight and narrow path is a welcome addition to read.In this racily written book – filled with interesting stories – from Enron to a host of other similar events from history to science to business to government affairs – the author traces the factors that make seemingly normal people behave irrationally leading to their own peril (and others aswell).Why do we do it ? Is it because we were told to respect and obey authority from our childhood, we work with similar people and want to confirm, we are swamped by too much of information and miss out the obvious, we are too far away, focused on the wrong things (the famous British Gas stories and their experiments with cost-cutting at the risk of safety are well captured) and a host of other reasons…As well-meaning individuals, all of us are guilty of our Blind Spots and willful blindness to the obvious when our focus drifts elsewhere……the book makes us aware of the circumstances we will be in when we demonstrate this aberrant behavior.Since the author is neither a professor nor a practicing psychologist with multiple Ph.Ds. – we are spared the gory and complex theories in psychology and conveys her proposition in a simple and readable manner relating it to events and stories that we are all familiar with ( British Gas, Enron etc).Thoroughly enjoyable.

Perhaps I didn't give it enough of a chance however, it did not grab my attention as I thought it would. It is written as a continuous sort of story style, which I was not aware of and was expecting an Index with various sections, etc. Sent to the second hand store.

Margaret's perspective on willful blindness was eye opening and challenging. Well researched and informed content gives readers a wide range of applications where willful blindness played a significant role in negative and/or disastrous outcomes. We must do better.

A startling and significant book about human behaviour.