![]() ![]() ![]() An awesome individual creates a “social opening” when they break out of these norms in ways that express their individuality. Our lives are usually governed by social norms, more-or-less fixed modes of behaviour and standard ways of doing things. Riggle explains what it means to be awesome in terms of a key notion: the “social opening”. Riggle’s book covers a great deal of ground: we find him developing a nuanced taxonomy of awesomeness and suckiness presenting vivid examples of the awesome in art, sport, and civic life mapping the cultural history of awesomeness and arguing for the vital importance of not sucking. It’s an ethical system that emphasises expressing oneself as an individual in creative and novel ways while also learning to recognise and appreciate the individuality of others. This outlook differs from more traditional ethical outlooks, which focus on rightness, fairness, or duty instead, the ethics of awesome is fundamentally about cultivating and appreciating individuality. In this book Nick Riggle presents an accessible, entertaining introduction to the “ethics of awesome” – an ethical outlook which Riggle claims is latent in our culture, and can readily be understood if we reflect on our usage of the antonyms “awesome” and “sucks”. On Being Awesome: A Unified Theory of How Not to Suck, by Nick Riggle (Penguin, 2017), £14.99, $20 ![]()
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