Name: Prisons We Choose to Live Inside
ISBN: 9780060390778

Doris Lessing

The celebrated author explores new ways to view ourselves and the society we live in, and gives us fresh answers to such enduring questions as how to think for ourselves and understand what we know.

Prisons We Choose to Live Inside

A collection of five lectures given in 1985. Drawing from politics, literature, social thought, religion and history, Doris Lessing draws a portrait of the extraordinary contradictions of modern society.

Moray Lyle McIntosh

Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing makes an argument for the importance of individualism in modern society. Her argument that the need for everyone to think critically, to question received knowledge and always be suspicious of peer pressure, unquestioning conformity and internal censorship is as true today as it was in 1986. These were lessons she knows should have been learnt by her own time, but were not and have still not become the norm now. This far I am in agreement and it is all too easy to see examples today. And yet the were several issues that I found very problematic. 

It is very much a product of its time and a preoccupation with Cold War politics and communist regimes, while dated, is completely understandable. My issues were with other elements. Lessing's idea that her society was "reverting" to a more brutal state relies on a progressive idea of history that jars while at the same time setting up the idea that a better age existed, a fact white she does ruefully admit. As extreme repressive regimes continue to fall away only to repeat in slightly altered form it is difficult to support the idea that such developments are really a reversion to a previous "primitive" state. The very use of such adjectives now causes a wince.

There are also several references to objective observation during her discussion of the role of literature and the social sciences that assume that this is possible when even the "hard"sciences today suggest that all observation not only suffers from bias but even causes it.

Most significantly of all was a balance between the individual and the group that I don't agree with. Groups do have a tendancy towards mass thought, to ready acceptance of the received view and there is always the danger of the "mob" in action and in thought but while new ideas might originate with brave individuals (Akhenaten is a questionable example and her interpretation of his place in Egyptian history troubled me) it is only with support of a group, however small this may be at the start, that these can have real impact. 

Lessing had, of course, seen plenty of horrific examples of the dark side of dogmatic groups, the false patriotism of the First World War, the colonialism of the British Empire, fascist and communist dictatorships from the 1930s onwards and I would in no denigrate her argument with regards to these examples. But one of the results of her personal experience is an overly monolithic and primarily negative view of all mass movements that carries with it it's own problems. Yes, we need to think, we need to question, we need to be aware of ourselves as individuals and we will always need the few who are brave and tireless and unwavering but they in turn will always need the cooperation and support of wider sections of society.