Find the Elephant: Scenes from the Everyday..UA

Every day we lie to ourselves and to others. We have learned to say not what we feel, but what is socially acceptable, in order to get along with the environment, achieving our own goals. But the less we are aware of our hidden motives, the better, because we don't like it even the thought of how selfish we are. This phenomenon is called the "elephant in the head": we hate to admit the hidden motivation, so we make it a taboo subject instead of reflecting on its nature and realizing the reasons for our behavior. However, unconscious motives do not only guide our personal actions , they also have an influence on art, education, medicine, politics, religion. The existence of hidden motives can hinder the work of social institutions, which even leads to doubts about the justice or legality of their existence. The purpose of this book is to draw our attention to hidden motives and ways of their definition. Then we can better understand ourselves and others, learn to better interact with each other