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Eamonn Toland

Goodreads Author

Born

Ireland

Website

https://eamonntoland.com/

Twitter

eamonntoland

Genre

Nonfiction, Psychology, History

Member Since

March 2020

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Éamonn Toland grew up in Ireland before reading Modern History and Economics at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, where he held a Lawlor Foundation Scholarship.

After graduation, he worked as a management consultant with Accenture and McKinsey & Co., and as an entrepreneur and business executive. In addition to being a media spokesman for Accenture, he has written articles for the London Times and Daily Telegraph, appeared in television shows and documentaries, and been a key speaker at numerous conferences.

Together with his wife and son, he divides his time between Dublin, London and New York. The Pursuit of Kindness is his first book.

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Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Eamonn Toland By nearly dropping dead! At the age of 29 I had a pulmonary embolism after a long-haul flight and collapsed unconscious at Heathrow Airport in London.…moreBy nearly dropping dead! At the age of 29 I had a pulmonary embolism after a long-haul flight and collapsed unconscious at Heathrow Airport in London. The UK National Health Service saved my life, but it was just before Christmas and they were overwhelmed by "granny dumping" - perfectly healthy seniors were dumped in hospital by their families, who didn't want to look after them over the holidays. I was in a disused operating theatre with lonely, dying men. One day they forgot to feed us for twelve hours. I saw the best and the worst in human nature up close and personal.

I had always been fascinated by the light and the dark side of human nature. I studied history at college, and I was appalled by how people turned their moral code upside down to justify slavery. The colony of Georgia, which includes modern day Alabama and Mississippi, had a ban on slavery that lasted for decades, until the profits from cotton plantations forced its repeal. I wanted to know why we are kind, how kind people do cruel things, and how we can recognise what we have in common in an increasingly polarised world. That gave me the idea for THE PURSUIT OF KINDNESS.(less)

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Average rating: 4.0 · 10 ratings · 3 reviews · 1 distinct work

The Pursuit of Kindness: An Evolutionary History of Human Nature

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Eamonn Toland's Blog

If people are naturally kind, why is there so much cruelty?

Are humans naturally inclined towards cruelty or kindness? The question has perplexed philosophers and scientists for centuries.

The Chinese thinker Mencius was one of the earliest proponents of the “human nature is good” theory, while Jean-Jacques Rousseau made the case forcefully during the Enlightenment. More recently, psychologists and evolutionary biologists point to evidence of kindness “hard Read more of this blog post »

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