Morris Berman

This book did not have the depth of Berman's earlier works, but then it has more urgency. I am writing this review in 2023, decades after the book was published. The trends Berman outlines have surely continued. Probably when the book was published, most people found implausible the idea that the USA might not be eternal. But nowadays we have people in Congress calling for a national divorce and it looks less plausible that the USA can survive another few election cycles.

One curious feature show more of Berman's argument for the decline of the USA is that it doesn't include problems with resources or ecology. Berman is a cultural historian, so it makes sense that his argument is purely cultural. But still, surely a cultural historian can look at how culture is embedded in a physical-ecological context? Well, maybe that is another sign of the book's age: such connections might have been rarely drawn 25 years ago.

A major theme of the book is the proposal that an appropriate response to our process of cultural decline is to work to cultivate and preserve the most valuable nuggets of our culture, just at a small scale. Berman is quite insistent that the primary nuggets are associated with the European Enlightenment, Voltaire etc. The notion of preserving nuggets is modeled on the dark age monasteries of Ireland etc. that kept at least a few classical texts available. But the Renaissance did not rely mere on these copies. Islamic culture kept alive a lot of classical culture, and the Renaissance recovered much of this from Islamic sources. How did Marco Polo and other contacts with China contribute to the vitality of the Renaissance, I sure don't know. Well even Christopher Columbus and the opening of the Americas... rather late in the Renaissance, OK. But surely the road from the Dark Ages to the Enlightenment was not built with purely European resources.

Berman sneers here at any kind of post-colonial perspective. If it's not European, it must be some primitive tribal nonsense. And of course a lot of New Age drivel does dress up nonsense in exotic costume. Maybe Berman is just of an old enough generation to make it difficult to see that high culture has existed outside of Europe, too... just as primitive nonsense exists in Europe, too!

My own hobby horse is the development of a Buddhist philosophy of science. Berman mostly dismisses deconstruction, but then he backs off a bit and limits his dismissal to the nihilist fringe. The kind of epistemological middle ground that Berman is looking for is what Buddhist thinkers have explored for thousands of years.

Despite these quibbles, Berman's perspectives on our cultural decline are still valuable and even fresh. show less

It's a fine rant. Our international behavior is entwined with our domestic behavior. "They hate us because we don't even know why they hate us." So this book was written not so long after 9/11, in the immediate shadow of the Iraq war. Did Saddam Hussein support Osama bin Laden? How about those tubes that maybe were for missiles or maybe for uranium centrifuges.

Ha, take Berman's characterization of George W. Bush, and hold them up against Donald J. Trump. However miserable a picture Berman show more painted twenty years ago, ach, we are so much further down that road at this point! Yes, the times call not so much for action but for theory. I would say, they call for wisdom and understanding. Theory sounds like the view from nowhere. That kind of escapism is very much what got us here. We need the view from right down here in the muck. show less

A continuation of his critique of our "hustle" society, Berman focuses on the historical development of the United States away from a republican (community) society toward one of hustlers and consumers who think only of getting theirs and screwing everyone else. Berman paints a grim, but realistic portrait of the fall of the American Empire--a house of cards built upon the externalization of social issues and the zealous belief that America is exceptional and will conquer any problem through show more technology.

This is not a Luddite treatise, however, but a critique of the religion that is America. Nowhere else but in America can a citizen be called "un-American" for his/her dissent--as if somehow it is heresy to speak one's truth if it is counter to the mythology.

The one area that I take issue with, however, is the fourth chapter in which Berman exalts the virtues of the ante-bellum South. Although I comprehend his thesis that the Civil War was more about a "clash of civilizations"--the North representing the bourgeois hustle society whereas the South maintained a more "republican", or community-oriented one--I cannot agree that "the agrarian South was of a life in which human beings existed serenely and harmoniously." (144) He waves his hands several times at the horrors of slavery, but seems to disregard that permeation of the same is what allowed landed white men to gentrify the South as new aristocrats. What about the patrols that kept slaves from gathering into groups to discuss, or the controls placed on women's advancement? Sure, the South might appear to have been a more ideal culture representing an idyllic, non-hustling society--but Berman dismisses the cost of that serenity and harmony where only one small group of individuals can take part in such a "utopia". As much as I might accept the premise that slavery was not initially the motive for war between the states, it cannot be excluded from the realities of that conflict. To elevate the culture of the South by dismissing the role of strict hierarchical structures in that culture is as much denial as is the fanatic pursuit of technological "fixes" to our social ills now.

That aside, I am in complete agreement with Berman in his identification of American culture as one of "permanent childhood." (166) Americans cannot conceptualize of themselves as anything less than representatives of a prophetic history--the City on the Hill--that somehow will guide the people of the world to salvation. It's a religious conviction that borders on fanaticism and would rival any radical Islamic sect for inherent violence. What is particularly frustrating, for Berman and for myself, is the failure of the typical American to recognize this. Whenever one proposes any critique of the "rightness" of American culture "the eyes glaze over. . . and they would change the subject." (167) I can understand why Berman might feel the only answer is to escape. I, too, have contemplated living as an ex-pat in a country where community matters and the "hustling" life is not regarded as a virtue. However, how can we hope to change if all those who "see" leave? Understandably, Berman gives no false hope that our culture will change, and I tend to concur with this assessment. As with any addiction, all must be lost before renewal can take place. Yet, without people remaining who can offer alternatives, hope is lost. I might not like what I see in this country as far as where it is going, but I can do what I can, and must, to perhaps plant a seed in others for a future time. My meaning is in this hope that I can play a role, however small, in something new, something better--even if it is long after I am gone. show less

I read Berman's Coming to Our Senses about thirty years ago and remember it having a large effect on my thinking. I finally got around to reading this earlier book. It really resonated with my thinking! Not too surprising!

This book really sketches out the dilemma of our time. I worked with a bunch of high tech folks a while back. These folks liked NASA and the whole idea of space travel. Their thinking was that our destiny was to populate the galaxy, and that was a good thing because we are show more well along the way to destroying earth. We need a new place to live!

This is exactly the thinking that Berman describes and characterizes as pathological, as the pathology of our time. I couldn't really tolerate working with people who took for granted the destruction of the planet and instead of working to stop it, they were counting on escaping the consequences. This to me is pretty much the ultimate in irresponsibility. But this irresponsibility is rampant.

This book dates from 1981 and its age shows. Berman talks about DDT as a growing problem. I don't know the details but I think DDT is far less a problem today, at least in the USA. The eagles are back! But of course there are any number of other growing environmental hazards. We've made progress on a number of fronts, but the overall situation looks rather bleak. Berman doesn't discuss climate change, that I can recall. But his comments translate seamlessly. I think a lot about what our great grandchildren will think of us as they look back at our behavior and the consequences we left them to experience.

Berman devotes a couple chapters to Gregory Bateson's ideas, as one road out of the Cartesian dualism that our modern industrial civilization is trapped in. He follows up with an analysis of such a cybernetic philosophy as a two-edged sword. This was really quite prescient: look at folks like Steve Jobs or Stewart Brand. These folks were idealistic revolutionary types in their younger days. But Brand ends up promoting MIT and now Apple has become the evil monster.

The situation that Berman sketches is still very much where we find ourselves. It's a bit odd that we are still stuck here thirty five years later! Berman didn't expect that! Unfortunately it seems all too likely that by postponing the reckoning we will only make it more painful. I think we do have some more resource, beyond Bateson, to help us move forward. I think Buddhism, for example, has a lot more to offer than Berman was ready to admit with his critique of guru devotion. I would also point to Bruno Latour's Actor Network theory.

Anyway, this is an excellent book and very relevant despite its age. show less