The Twilight of American Culture

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 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 show more 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

According to Berman (and I tend to agree), American culture has entered its twilight, ready for decline and disintegration. In fact, the decline has already begun with the advent of McWorld - corporate takeover and marketed messages. There are four factors that coincide with the collapse of culture, all apparent in society today. These four factors are: "(a) accelerating social and economic inequality; (b) declining marginal returns with regard to investment in organizational solutions to socioeconomic problems; (c) rapidly dropping levels of literacy, critical understanding, and general intellectual awareness; (d) spiritual death - that is, Spengler's classicism: the emptying out of cultural content and the freezing (or repackaging) of show more it in formulas - kitsch, in short."

He also chronicles the fall of the Roman empire and the subsequent monastic tradition of copying texts to show how another culture ended and what the response was. Berman provides insight into how to live a monastic life and the value of living in this way for the preservation of culture. In the end, he outlines possible 22nd centuries based on alternative visions and social theories.

Really, it is all pretty bleak but not out of touch with reality. Most of what he says makes perfect sense and has the possibility of utter rage at what we have become. For me, the main message is to keep doing what I have been doing - learning, creating, teaching, discovering. These things may soon be more important for cultural preservation than ever. Living the life of a new monastic individual may have unforeseen, positive impact when culture hits its ultimate lowest. If we can't stop a bleak future, at least we can help shape it. show less

Found this gem while searching for Morris Dancing... it has sat unopened on my shelves for some 20 years, but it looked interesting. And boy, was it ever interesting.
At times he seems like an unrepentant socialist rabble-rouser, at other times like a tenured don in a conservative English department with a Robert Browning fixation. He quotes the Cato Institute and the Brookings Institution in support of some of his numbers.
Seeing that this was published in the late 90's, I expected it to be dated. Uh, not so much. More like prescient, and his trends have obviously continued, He doesn't name Trump but he predicted him by his universal fighting fetish and his "I love the poorly educated!" schtick.
His proposed solutions were a bit thin. show more Interesting, but could use some more meat. The bottom line is that here is a man who is convinced that liberal arts, classics, rhetoric, dialectic, philosophy, etc., are the real products of civilization and ours are worth saving.
You many not agree with all he has to say, but in the end he'll make you think about big issues in a new way. And that's the very essence of the Enlightenment he so desperately wants to save. show less

We live in a time in which the media is constantly reporting that Americans feel their country has lost its way, which begs the question for me "just what was was that in the first place?". Written over a decade ago, Berman doesn't address the question in that way, but his analysis of our social condition provides a compelling answer as to why so many individuals feel that something is missing from our society. Unsurprisingly for someone who can be characterized as a cultural critic, he makes a strong case that our media-driven society is a superficial and ultimately unsustainable, if not destructive one.

The book revolves around a well-argued contention that we are currently experiencing 4 factors that are common in historical examples show more of civilizational collapse:
1) Accellerating social and economic inequality: Berman argues that this is a destabilizing characteristic, and suggests that gated communities are a sign of the growing potential for conflict.
2) "Declining marginal returns with regard to investment in organizational solutions to socioeconomic problems": For me, this was the least explored of the four, but I think it important to point out that in light of the current political dialogue on 'class warfare', that Berman is not arguing for big government solutions, consistently characterizing bureaucratic approaches as being dehumanizing and lacking soul.
3) Rapidly declining levels of literacy, cognitive practice, and general knowledge: We not only live in a society that only sees merit in that which has obvious economic value, but we live in one that actively disparages intellectual achievement and exploration of the humanities. Our society wallows in scientism, while routinely discounting some of the most basic findings of science.
4) Spiritual death: Berman does not discuss religion per se, but instead addresses the pervasiveness of 'kitsch', the presentation of the culturally-empty, or the trite use of formulizations as being of higher value than the prototype (instead of 'Disneyfication', I'd characterize this more precisely as 'Epcotification').

Given these trends, and the fallout from them, it should come as no surprise that Americans, and indeed, inhabitants of much of the world, are experiencing feelings of ennui, disconnection, or concern about the future of the human world. As indicated by the title, Berman's expectation for the future is not an optimistic one. Referring to multiple literary sources, including "Canticle For Liebowitz" and "Fahrenheit 451", Berman advocates the somewhat unusual response of a new form of monasticism in which a small number of learned elites can maintain the flame of knowledge during some upcoming period of social crisis. This is not an optimistic book, and it offers minimal hope, beyond 'it might not become as bad as it could be', and 'even if it does, it eventually will get better again.'.

I don't agree with all the author's political positions, he's more than a bit overintellectual, and a bit snobbish, but disagreement on the nature of a few trees did not ruin this forest for me. A single reference to cybernetics strikes me as a somewhat quaint term for the digital world, and the sort of intellectual pretension that needs to be ignored in order to fully appreciate the deeper significance of this text. show less

The key premise of this book is that America is going the way of most previous civilisations, having reached a pinnacle, there is an inevitable fall. He suggests that there is no avoidance of this pathway, and although each previous civilisation has met their fall in individual ways, there have been some commonalities. He looks at what he believes are shared problems with the fall of the Roman Empire.

Berman, however, also believes that although there is no way in which to do more than slow up the process, there are quiet actions that can be taken in order to provide the material post-fall, for the cultural phoenix to rise in the future, what he calls his ‘monastic option’.

The four areas he sees as the most damaging, and often show more interlocking, are:

- The increasing divide between the wealthy and less wealthy, which is currently reaching ever increasing heights. Also the dissipation of the middle classes.

- The inability or lack of desire to sustain the common entitlements including, for example, healthcare, social support etc.

- That education is becoming increasingly utilitarian – solely as a means to an end, rather than as a means of cultural expansion and enlightenment in itself

- ‘Spiritual death’ – or the increasing narrowness of possibilities for cultural growth and expansion caused by ‘McWorld’.

Although Berman discusses all the above, offering perspectives from both sides of the political spectrum, the focus is on the third (and the fourth in regards to how it impacts on the third).

He cites examples of major educational institutions being led/ruled by the administration and students rather than the academic body. Where academic heights are not encouraged unless they fulfil the desires of the student or corporate body they may be being sponsored by. Of instances where educational institutions refuse to fail weak students, and students being able to prosecute/persecute academics for not giving them the marks they desire, irrespective of their academic ability (I have heard of a personal incidence of the latter happening in Australia too).

He suggests much of this is caused by the ‘corporate’ educational system, where profit is put before the cart-horse, and failures would endanger the required numbers of students to enhance the treasure-trove. He also mentions in passing some of the projects that have shown substantial benefits from effective early learning that increase an individual’s learning capacities in later life, that are not being taken up as a national need, despite the benefits.

Berman is talking of a world where education is being weighed but not valued in its broadest sense.

He is also talking of a world in which many are choosing not to see the problems. A world which believes itself to be advancing, and that refuses to see the shadow side of the advances it is making.

Along with other historians, Berman cites the fictional works of writers such as Walter Miller, and Ray Bradbury’s ‘Fahrenheit 451’ as examples of foresight into the future we have ahead of us, where knowledge is perceived as worthless or dangerous if it refuses simply to support the mass consensus.

Berman suggests that the best we might be able to do is to leave traces, whispers of the depth and breadth of cultural possibilities to be found once we have reached the bottom of the pit of ‘fall’. He calls this ‘The Monastic Option’ after the fact that the cultural heritage we have was preserved, in some ways inadvertently he posits, by the monastic orders of the dark ages, who often didn’t understand or know what they were doing, but were doing it as a part of their monastic life.

He suggests that quiet, local, individual actions of cultural growth have the possibility of leaving behind traces that might be picked up in the future. These may simply be personal development, or they may impact on the local community. He cites a number of small initiatives that have transformed the lives of those who have participated, however warns that any such projects should remain out of the main stream or counter-culture as they will be drained of their power once the ‘mass’ culture takes them on board and absorbs them in McWorld.

Although he is optimistic that a phoenix will rise, he reminds the reader that nothing may succeed.

As a Brit I read this book both out of an interest in America, but also to see whether there was anything that resonated with my British experience, and I certainly feel that we too are on a similar path (in a way perhaps that the Netherlands and Scandinavian nations may not be in quite the same way).

I notice that some people become increasingly belligerent at any mention that technology has any downside or ‘shadow side’. It is almost as if they have invested so much in the striding out that they can’t afford themselves to believe in what they have done having any flaws. Often the masses have digital changes imposed on them without being offered any alternative. I also get a sense talking to some that they have almost been brainwashed, they are on a recording, if they say it often enough as a mantra, it must be true. But then this might also apply to those of us who at least raise a question-mark over the unremitting ‘progress’ enforced on us.

As someone who believes that the technological advances of the past 2-300 years have brought great progress, I still want those who use them to do so with integrity. Technology is a tool, as Berman says, not life itself.

It seems to me that a useful metaphor for this situation is a heart with narrowing arteries, making it increasingly difficult for our life blood to get through.

For a book of less than 200 pages I felt that Berman got quite a bit into it, and fear I may not have done it the justice I intend. However, alert to the fact that this is a pre-9/11 book, I am interested to read its two successors to see whether they led Berman to remould any of his perceptions and ideas.

Although Berman refers to the views of both sides of the political spectrum, offering the evidence on which they base their views, he makes no such attempt to qualify his statement that ‘no one reads’ which I found quite amusing, but would like to see it supported.

Berman also cited many interesting writers to whose work I am now going to be led. show less

The book presents clear evidence for the decline and hollowing out of America which the years' events since its publication in 1999 further prove. He finds the collapse unavoidable and then suggests the only ethical and meaningful way to live at this time is to quietly renounce the values of the culture and live according to one's own. Perhaps these counter lives will provide a beacon to a later enlightenment or not.

i pretty much agree with everything he says. our culture, our politics, are cesspools of submediocrity. but all this talk about the meaningless of consumerism made me want to go out and buy some new threads. which i did.