Cliff LyonMorris Berman: Dark Ages America
Originally published on OneUtah June 2007.
Morris Berman, a distinguished professor and writer is known as an innovative cultural historian and social critic. His most recent book, Dark Ages America, is not pretty. I first saw him on C-Span book TV. It was interesting because even among the predictably liberal sympathetic crowd in attendance, some got angry.
Why? Why did liberals get angry with another liberal? Because Morris not only describes all the ways we are screwed, but that we are beyond the point of salvation. Kaput. Finito. Buh, bye.
Listen: …An interview you will not forget.
HOW BAD IS IT?
In 1984 Ronald Reagan announced, with characteristic indifference to fact, that it was “morning in America.” A quarter-century later, the twilight, then already perceptible, has deepened. The international financial position of the United States is ruinous. Globally, attitudes toward American policy range from misgiving to loathing. The foreseeable consequences of climate change and environmental pollution range from painful to catastrophic. For most Americans (especially the tens of millions without health insurance), medical care is the worst in any advanced industrial society. Economic insecurity is epidemic; overwork and high stress are the rule rather than the exception; inequality is at an all-time high; trust in government is at an all-time low (though perhaps not low enough, in the present circumstances). The (until recently) governing party openly aspires to permanent one-party rule and a Caesarist executive. Civic virtue, lately renamed “social capital,” is waning; neighborliness has dwindled to the point of near-anomie. Functional illiteracy is rampant: in most non-affluent school districts, the public schools are not merely ineffectual but often unsafe as well. Nearly half of all Americans believe that the earth is 10,000 years old or less and that angels and other supernatural beings regularly intervene in terrestrial affairs. The average American’s day includes six minutes playing sports, five minutes reading books, one minute making music, thirty seconds attending a play or concert, twenty-five seconds making or viewing art, and four hours watching television. And even Americans who don’t watch television are perfused by a stream of commercial messages so intense and ubiquitous as to constitute a culture (in the biological as well as social sense) of consumption. Compared with the imagined noonday brilliance of that vibrant idyll, Walt Whitman’s Democratic Vistas, the prospects for contemporary American civilization are heartbreakingly bleak.
June 11th, 2007 at 9:11 am
I was there at the New Dominion Bookshop last summer when Berman was on tour for Dark Ages America.
Some people in the audience reacted very emotionally to his proposition that the United States is going the way of the Roman empire and that there is no hope on the horizon for the reconstitution of American Dream.
One young man left the room in a huff; another became angrily insistent that life is getting better for everyone in every way.
June 11th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
If more people would believe that angels regularly intervene in terrestrial affairs and actually acted upon those beliefs we would be much better off as a nation.
June 11th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
…as opposed to thinking that Bushco can lead us out of this wilderness. I have greater trust in angels.
June 11th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Morris forgot to include This in his list.
It would be a good idea to educate yourself about ways of coping and surviving economic collapse and decline. Start by asking your oldest living relatives questions about life in the thirties.
June 12th, 2007 at 10:06 am
The dark ages?…and here I thought global warming would result in more sunshine.
In review of the histories of modern societies, once the judiciary becomes a tool of the elite, any Nation defined as “for the people” is toast. The only way back is through benign dictatorship, that destroys the elites that has corrupted the means of governing via the people. You cannot vote out tyranny.
So what you want to ask is “do you want refried gonzales with your bandito style democracy”?
June 13th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Because America has been driving itself to destruction mostly by overconsumption for over a century and the Republicans simply won’t allow a correction, I would not be surprised by any unthinkable outcome.
August 21st, 2007 at 5:29 am
The US is a joke on the world stage but a dangerous one as Berman correctly points out. The only difference between the Presidential candidates is that the Republicans will attack Iran in 2009 and the Democrats will in 2010. As for the moronization of the American people , I’m still waiting to meet one who doesn’t believe that humans lived with the dinosaurs. I travel overseas 2 months a year and no one I ask believes that. In fact, on a few occasions , they tell me that there is a 60 million year gap between the end of the dinosaurs and mankind.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
I read Berman’s book about two months ago. It does a good job of shattering the mythology of the “American people.” Berman to his credit, challenges America to prove him wrong. So far, I have only seen confirmations of his thesis. And that is truly depressing. Those of us who see relevance in his work are a minority, and the Ken Bingham’s of the world will continue to look to angels to guide them, not reason, or the scientific method, or anything that separates us from the “dark ages.” “Dark Age America” is an indictment upon American rejection of intellectual thought. Superstition and mythology represent the paradigm that will define us under Berman’s thesis, and the enlightenment thinking of Jefferson, Madison and other forward thinking Americans is, shall we say, “rendered quaint” by the current culture.
Berman’s book is probably more relevant to future historians who ask the question, “what went wrong with America.” For those of us trying to stem the tide, we are left with a daunting task, of trying to educate those who disvalue education. I hate to say it Cliff, but I don’t like our chances.
September 19th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Memories of the good times, and you thought Cassandra was shrill. How do you like us now? What a difference a year makes.
Obama is sure to reverse all this.
September 20th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Berman must be a fan of Richard B. Riddick, philosopher and movie/video game character.
From “The Chronicles of Riddick”:
September 20th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Cliff learned of this from C-Span book TV. An oxymoron. Sign of the times, even if you are a progressive.
“The average American’s day includes six minutes playing sports, five minutes reading books, one minute making music, thirty seconds attending a play or concert, twenty-five seconds making or viewing art, and four hours watching television”.
Now we know that despite any inclination that liberals, and Cliff in particular, have open minds, they are still watching television to determine the measure of their superiority and open mindedness. What are you at, between youtube vids, Mcneil, and C-span, 2 hours a day, 1?
It is the spoon fed culture, cognitive consonance rules what you believe is true, from ones upbringing and experience, and who one hangs with. Been hanging with surfers lately, they don’t trouble social causation, the sea rules the reality. Then we’re gone. The rest is the flotsam and jetsam of human reality.