The Twilight of American Culture

Rating:
Summary: A harsh perspective, a provocative mirror
Review: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.-- Julius Caesar, I, ii.

One could read the 800+ pages of Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence for a more comprehensive review of how Western Civilization got to its current sorry state, but I felt sufficiently despondent after the first seventy pages of Berman's Twilight of American Culture. And that's fine, since the purpose of Twilight is to get past the diagnostic review (which, though dark, is hard to argue with at whatever level of detail you would like) and talk about prognosis and prescription.

Not that his prognosis is cheerier. Between cyclical theories of civilization and the acceleration of historical momentum, to believe that the Machine can be stopped or fixed is a triumph of wishful thinking over experience. Whether from a cultural, economic or environmental perspective, things don't look good.

Now, this is certainly an arguable conclusion, but Berman says that there is enough reason to think that the current decline is irreversible to take seriously the question of what to do about it. Since it is in the nature of our culture to ignore complexity and difficulty and to trust blindly in our technological and economic power, it makes sense not only take a hard look at the possibility (without the comforts of self-delusion), but to take protective steps. And, if you think that we are going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket, it's more than prudent.

Some of the negative reviews of this book are unhappy that Berman brings a hard edge to his views or that the answers are not neatly packaged or supported by scholarly objective data. But that's the point; the world isn't encouraging or neat-and-tidy. Berman has some ideas and examples of what to do, or at least directions to think about. More importantly, as he repeatedly emphasizes, it is up to each individual to figure out the right course of action based on their own thinking and situation, with whatever guidance can be garnered from others who have thought about the problem, too. If it is twilight out, don't curse the darkness, don't curse the candle that may not light up the whole room; light your own. In the end, that is the part of Western Civilization that is most worth preserving, whether the Apocalypse de jour is coming soon or not.

Until more people start taking that seriously, we need books like Twilight, even with its imperfections, to keep reminding us.

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant analysis of our current situation
Review: A brilliant analysis of our current situation, Berman uses sources as varied as Marx, Jay Leno, and DeLillo and DeTocqueville to show how how big business has co-opted all aspects of American culture.

Rating:
Summary: Engaging and accurate
Review: This is an excellent book, one of the best of the sociological ones that I've read. The title pretty much sums it up: the global American culture has reached its apogee and will soon fade away.

It's a simple truth that all civilizations die eventually, so for America it's just a matter of time. But Berman's thesis rests on the point that it's coming soon - in the next century or two. Berman points to clear signs, such as the growing inequality between the rich and poor, growing cultural illiteracy, and spiritual death, which were mirrored in the decline of the Roman Empire (the largest previous empire for which we have coherent records), and other great civilizations.

The good news is 1) there's no exact way to predict how this will happen, so it might not be that bad, 2) the culture will not necessarily burn out in a great catastrophe, it's possible it will just fade gracefully into a new culture, and 3) there are things we can do to help this transition. Berman calls this helping the monastic option, after the monks who preserved knowledge through the Middle Ages, and like those monks, it's all about infusing real knowledge into our culture.

This book suffers from intellectual elitism at points, which is probably easy to succumb to when you spend your time researching how dumb modern Americans can be. But the saving grace of the book is its emphasis on real solutions to promote the monastic option, and on an overall positive outlook in the long, long run. Berman's style is breezy and quick, and though much of his theory is simply common sense, he interjectives tons of statistics and interesting ideas to make it quite worthwhile.

Twilight has some interesting parallels with what I believe as a member of the Baha'i Faith, and this made the book more interesting for me. Baha'is have a slightly different take on the issues here, but hold a similar thesis - that the world (which can currently be described as dominated by American culture) is on the cusp of a great change. Baha'is concentrate on the ways in which the "old world order" is deteriorating while an often-invisible new grass-roots culture is being built up, embodied by ideas of racial and religious harmony, equality of the sexes, environmental concern, and an emphasis on self-motivated knowledge-seeking. If you enjoy Berman's book and want to delve into a religious viewpoint on the same issues, check out some Baha'i books, many of which can be found on Amazon.

Rating:
Summary: Resisting Easy Answers
Review: Berman paints a chilling and all-too-familiar picture of the coming nightfall in The Twilight of American Culture. In this slim but powerful book he pulls together all the little hints, all the strange anecdotes, all the troubling signs of a society in decline that surround us: the increasing evidence of widespread ignorance among even the well-educated; the mind-numbing tedium of most of what passes for entertainment today; the staggering popularity of facile self-help guides that offer quick fixes to eternal problems. Berman offers no quick fixes; after carefully drawing numerous parallels between the decadence of ancient Rome and that of today's Western culture, he traces the path to Enlightenment through the Dark Ages and suggests that a similar journey lies ahead of us. Our salvation (or rather, that of our children's children), lies in the pockets of "monastic" activity that may survive the coming implosion of mass culture. Berman cites several instances of modern-day monastics, guerrillas in the culture war who educate the indigent, provide music to the de-cultured, and challenge the powers that be while resisting co-optation by corporate sponsors. He doesn't have any easy answers and warns that the search for global solutions is itself part of the problem. If you feel like a stranger in a strange land, if you can't quite believe that things are as bad as they seem but no other explanation makes sense, if you thought maybe it was just you but now you're not so sure, you might just feel a little less crazy and a little more hopeful after you read this book.

Rating:
Summary: The Sky is Falling Again
Review: I don't know what this guy's specialty is, but it doesn't seem to be the subject he writes about. His book is a patchwork of other people's material - often suspect - i.e. Jay Leno surveys and unverified stats from NPR's "Car Talk." This wouldn't be so bad if he did something interesting with the info, but no - he just wraps everything in a weak, Spengler-style historical analysis (American culture is a dying organism). His solution to this dilemma seems to be gleaned from science fiction novels: preserve culture through a sort of secular monasticism, similar to the people at the end of "Fahrenheit 451" who huddled in the woods and memorized literature.

To be frank, I didn't find anything original about this book. The author seems to subscribe to the "everybody but me is an idiot" philosophy of life, and this causes many of his inferences to appear desperate. If you're looking for more successful literature of this type, try Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind," or Robert Bork's "Slouching Towards Gomorrah."

Better yet, if you are searching for some clear thinking on the subject, read Karl Popper's "The Open Society and its Enemies" as well as his "The Poverty of Historicism". He carefully dissects these pessimistic, crystal-ball fantasies and exposes their fundamental flaws. But all said, if you're still intent on reading literature of this type, skip Berman's book and pick up a copy of "Chicken Little."

Rating:
Summary: America in Decline - Now What?
Review: I found Berman's analysis of American culture quite damning, and rightfully so. The proliferation of distance learning and Internet-based education are seen for what they are: shameless attempts by universities to increase their customer base without the capital investment associated with buildings. Berman laments the cultural vapidity of today's youth, providing astonishing statistics that reveal just how poor a job our schools are doing. In short, American culture produces conformist consumers who seek meaning in the products they purchase, are disappointed when the new toy becomes boring, and move on to their next purchase of happiness.

Berman does the reader a service by justifying and elucidating a feeling that may prevail in culturally sensitive individuals: something is wrong. Berman's failure, however, is in prescribing a realistic, pragmatic way for groups of people to find meaning in life. His assurance that the New Monastic Individual - armed with a classical education, aesthetic sensibilities, and a thirst for enlightenment - will carry on civilization after the great collapse of capitalist societies seems a bit far-fetched. Likewise, his comparisons of America to Rome are interesting, but are hardly substantiated by Berman's discussion or the evidence he presents. At the end of the book, I sat back and wondered about what I should take from a work whose main sources include National Public Radio, the New Yorker, and science fiction.

I was simultaneously disappointed and fascinated by the unbridled cynicism of this book. Fascinated because American culture is in such a mess, and Berman provides quantifiable evidence of that observation. Disappointed because anyone can identify a situation and mount evidence to prove their assertions; few can provide truly visionary prescriptions for the nefarious diseases inhabiting our culture.

Rating:
Summary: A surprisingly bitter book
Review: Compared to Berman's previous books - most notably "Reenchantment of the World" and "Coming to Our Senses" - "The Twilight of American Culture" is a bitter book to read. Berman has only disdain for anything that has attained any degree of popularity in American culture. Oprah Winfrey, Deepok Chopra and even the voluntary simplicity movement take severe lashes from him. Predictably, the criticism he vents against major corporations and the profit motive in general is unrelenting. The book's horizon is profoundly provincial; its bias is American and Academic at the unfortunate exclusion of a necessary broader perspective.

Even more peculiarly, Berman seems to be eagerly awaiting what he calls the "Great Collapse," an apocalyptic event when something resembling the Dark Ages will befall America sometime later in the 21st Century. A proponent of cyclical patterns of history, Berman contends that a "New Enlightenment" will follow this "Great Collapse." And the "New Enlightenment" will be made possible by Berman's proposed New Monastic Individual (NMI), using Bradbury's Book People and Walter Miller's Leibowitzian monks, among others, as models for preserving cultural artifacts worth saving. Finally, Berman simply is not specific about what he believes should be preserved or how his NMIs will accomplish this formidable task. Therefore, the book - after nearly 200 pages - falls flat with a resounding thud.

My greatest disappointment with Twilight is rooted in my respect for Morris Berman as a visionary and scholar. "The Twilight of American Culture" reads like the writing of a wounded man who has failed in his personal ambition and has become desperately unhappy with the world he inhabits. He should re-read "Reenchantment of the World" to get some hope back into his life.

Rating:
Summary: If "Hype is Life," Berman is Symptomatic of the Problem
Review: Callow and disappointing are the two words that come to mind as one reads this book. While Berman is able to identify some features of the decline in American culture (e.g., hype is life, the pervasiveness of kitsch, the absurdities of radical feminist thought, postmodernism and deconstruction, a media that works against depth and self-reflection, the commodification of knowledge, the egalitarian dismissal of excellence, the vision of a totally administered world, multiculturalism worshipped to the point of pathology, and the corporate control of a consumer culture), his book is nothing more that an example of this mindless drivel. Berman nowhere gives us any indepth insight into these problems. The author, instead, quotes endlessly from history in an attempt to impress the uninformed reader, but he obviously has little understanding of history itself. His learning is a mile wide and an inch deep.

Berman quotes from an array of authors who, for the most part, also live in a fantasy land and share his utopian expectations. He does attack the New Age thinkers, but his ideas are closely connected with their thinking. Consequently, this book has no meat, no substance! Berman, for example, will repeatedly make derogatory comments about CNN and other news organizations, but nowhere does the illustrious Mr. Berman ever tell us just what "real" news is. Just what is it that these organizations should be putting on the air, Mr Berman?

Mr Berman talks about the growing gap between the rich and the poor as if this were something new in history and a sign of America's decline. But, when was there not an extreme gap between rich and poor? In the 1880's? In 1776? He laments the poor education of a large segment of the population. When was this not the case? In 1920? In 1830? Give me a break! And let's also make it clear, when Berman speaks of his ridiculous notion of the "monastic option" which will save what is of value in our culture from the coming collapse, doesn't he realize that it has always been a small percentage of the population that preserves and advances high culture in the first place? If Mr. Berman took the time to walk through one of those chain book stores he is so quick to condemn, he would surely notice a couple book shelves full of works on and by Shakespeare. If you listen to Mr. Berman with his ad nauseam quoting of history, you would be left with the impression that all the French peasants in the eighteenth century were reading Voltaire.

In the end, Berman is both shallow and confused. He even, at one point, acknowledges that "the meaning of collapse is in the eye of the beholder." What is this? An author who pretends to inform us as to the "twilight of American culture" leaves us with the heady thought that the crisis is all in the eye of the beholder! Save your time and save your money. What we have here is just another example of "hype" masquerading as scholarship. Berman himself is nothing but a symptom of the decline he so laments.

Rating:
Summary: Life in the Monastic Lane
Review: Having lived in the Mountains for 22 years, homeschooling our kids, growing our own food and herbs, being "closet TV" people,(we take the TV out of the closet to watch an occasional rented movie)and teaching herbal medincine at the school we created, we have been on the periphery of the McWorld that Mr. Berman accurately describes. In fact, we have even called ourselves Monks in the mountains.When a person is so immersed in the current corporated realities and glitz, it is hard to see that there are other possiblities for our lives. I completely agree with Mr. Berman that the only way out of the dilema is to preserve a deeper knowledge as to how to be true and authentic human beings. It was wonderfu to see that Mr. Berman states this explicitly and gives suggests of how to be a modern day "monk"; preserving our integrity and intelligence. Many people will not see this as an option, and in fact, will hold on to the current mode of being (We have dubbed it the "herd going over the cliff syndrome")because it seems exciting and engages the mind in continuous seeking outside of itself. This can be very addicting and difficult to break. I feel that Mr. Berman's book can help people to see the environment in which they live more clearly and hopefully, if they come out of the dream scape, will try to help in small but significant ways to stave off the darkness. Mr. Berman also addresses the dilema of Indonesia and other third world nations. The pollution, human suffering, and degradation that accompanies corporate take overs of other nations is not something many people are aware of. He suggests that we make things by hand and simplify our voracious appetites for more. I feel that this book, even though it is hard hitting, is a necessary wake up call for those who are willing to live a more connected and real life. The only thing that I would have added to the idea of being a monk which he didn't state, is that people not only have to preserve their scholarly intelligence but also need to relearn skills for living; gardening (even in containers), cooking, sewing, herbal medicine making,(this really helps to get a person out of the corporate medicine mess), and othe skills of this sort that are being rapidly forgotten.

Rating:
Summary: Started on track, but took a wrong turn
Review: When I first picked up this book, I was immediately intrigued by the thesis. It is undeniable that American culture has drifted toward the appeasement and courtship of the masses or "lowest common denomiator" and that corporate culture is a major factor in this.

My problem with the text sits on two levels: first, Mr Berman begins dissecting certain aspects of society that he feels are beginning to show the strains of a culturally bankrupt people (universities as nothing more than businesses selling diplomas to consumers is one of the better examples), but his breadth of exploration of these aspects is limited. As a reader, I was hoping for a broader discussion on elements in American society that are deteriorating and how they are deteriorating. After all if one titles a book "Twilight of American Culture" one would expect to encounter more of these scenarios. This text stops short and in the end the author's message seems to have lost much of its gravity and scope.

Secondly, Mr. Berman in using his allusion to the fall of Rome to point out that America, at some point in the future will not be able to sustain itself financially (one cited example is the solvency problem of Social Security). What Mr. Berman conveniently seems to forget is that business IS the engine of society. There is a place for charity work and good deeds, but an economy cannot function on non-profit organizations. The capitalist system, although not perfect, best allows creative expression, and personal achievement to flourish. No other non-military system in human history has had the influence that American culture has created, for better or worse, but there is a reason it works.

By the end of the text, there is a feeling that something should be done to make capitalistic opportunities more available to the masses, and although many interesting ideas are discussed, I can't believe that this author's solution is a viable one.