Emotional Ignorance: Lost and found in the science of emotion

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Burnett questions all empathetic notions and posits that everything you consider unique about yourself are chemical processes that happen to each individual. Written during lockdown after a personal loss Burnett’s own emotional journey and struggle to understand what he was (and still is) feeling infuses the book with personality and insight. I also felt that the book seemed to lose structure as the chapters wore on, I thought Chapters 5 and 6 had a tendency to off on one too many random tangents. Home to William Golding, Sylvia Plath, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sally Rooney, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Max Porter, Ingrid Persaud, Anna Burns and Rachel Cusk, among many others, Faber is proud to publish some of the greatest novelists from the early twentieth century to today.

The book is specific and wordy but also too general; it is like baking a casserole that comes out simultaneously burnt and raw!The hook continues well into the questions that are posed as part of the blurb on the back, and albeit in a slightly roundabout way, these are well answered during the course of the book. It is, in part, what allows for altruism and other seemingly impossible acts of sacrifice even at a high personal cost and also the reason behind the immense pain caused by the loss of a loved one. In Chapter Five, Burnett delves into Emotional Relationships and considers why losing a parent might be easier than losing your romantic partner. Aside from the detailed anatomy, the rest of the information is very general, more of his musings than fact, and deludes into social diatribes by the end of the book.

Here's my practical advice: DO NOT compare your loss to other losses; this is toxic and harmful advice. For those who are interested in emotion, there's absolutely nothing new or presented in a unique way. Emotions, according to the Stoics and Buddhists, block reason and enlightenment, and the common view is that emotions are an impediment to rational cognition.Exploring grief has opened up doors for understanding and making sense of our experience which led Burnett to unlikely emotional phases yielding intriguing insights. After losing his dad, a neuroscientist goes on a journey of discovery into where our emotions come from, what purpose they serve, and why they make us feel the way they do. His previous books, The Idiot Brain and The Happy Brain, were international bestsellers published in over twenty-five countries. The more aware we are of our emotions, the more we can moderate and control their effects and influence on ourselves.