What Makes Us Tick? The Ten Desires That Drive Us
By Hugh Mackay
Hachette, $35, pp 319
ISBN 9780733625077
Hugh Mackay has been studying Australian society for more than three decades, and has a number of interesting books and reports under his belt. What Makes Us Tick? is presented as a distillation of what he has learned from his research and observations, but anyone expecting insights about shifting political allegiances, the generational confusion of ideologies and the broader social landscape of the country will not find it here. Mackay’s focus, instead, is on the internal drivers of personality, not in Australians in particular, but in Westerners in general. The result is a piece of work which is not uninteresting but certainly on the vague side.
Much of this has to do with Mackay’s methodology, if it can be called that. In the past, his technique has been to gather people — not a statistically random selection, but just people he happens to know or has run across — and get them to talk about a general theme.
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