Book Recommendation and Answer

A couple years ago my grandmother gave me this book for x-mas. I took it with me as reading material on my trip to Cuba. The whole thing was kind of an eye opener.

[link|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/039332169X/qid=1045791056/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-8291099-5077435|http://www.amazon.co...3-8291099-5077435]

Berman carefully develops his view on what is wrong with US Culture (a lot of his thesis is that there isn't any - instead we have commerce).

So what to do?

In the other responses so far I see lots of immediate concrete things to work on. This is OK and I think they are worth working on. But I also see them as symptoms of bigger problems.

The number one problem with the US right now is greed and selfishness. Its pervasive. The heroes are CEOs. The big stories are about how people have one little idea and get rich from it. The whole society is geared towards consumption and the "I got mine - get your own" attitude dominates.

What a sucky way to live.

I got an email this week that my elementary school gym teacher is retiring soon. I had to write him a letter because this guy made the school the center of a community. There were evening movies, family potlucks, fund raising talent shows, family ethnic dinners (bring something your grandma made in the old country) and a friday after school floor hockey league. We knew our neighbors. I haven't known my neighbors since I left college.

The best thing you can do to improve the US is go volunteer at your neighborhood school. Go teach something. Our educational system has been replaced by cable TV.

[link|http://www.thespot.org/|This guy] has at least a piece of the puzzle.

The government is meant to reflect the will of the people. What frightens me is that, maybe this one does.

Have to change that first.

This review from your link,

A slightly forbidding introduction to a book, but indicative of its author's disgust at the homogenized McWorld in which we live, and an enticing challenge to read on. As the title The Twilight of American Culture suggests, Morris Berman's outlook is somewhat bleak. Analogizing the contemporary United States to the late Roman Empire, Berman sees a nation fat on useless consumption, saturated with corporate ideology, and politically, psychically, and culturally dulled. But he believes that this behemoth--what Thomas Frank called the "multinational entertainment oligopoly"--must buckle under its own weight. His hope for a brighter tomorrow lies in a modern monastic movement, in which keepers of the enlightenment flame resist the constant barrage of "spin and hype." Ironically, despite his disdain for "the fashionable patois of postmodernism," he approvingly quotes poststructuralist theorist Jean-Fran\ufffdois Lyotard's maxim "elitism for everybody" in describing this cadre of idiosyncratic, literate devotees, these new monks.

Berman is plainspoken and occasionally caustic. The Twilight of American Culture is an informed and thought-provoking book, a wake-up call to a nation whose powerful minority has become increasingly self-satisfied as their stock options ripen, while an underclass that vastly outnumbers the e-generation withers on the vine and cannot locate itself on any map. It is a quick and savage read that aims to get your eyes off this computer, your nose out of that self-help book, and send you back to thought and action. --J.R.

And: it's pointless to imagineer any form of, "what the world ought to do"; hell, it's probably almost as pointless to echo! the Self-Help scourge and.. get very specific about the 12 x 12-Step program Muricans might... want to audition.

You have included already the more important ones (IMhO). I'd suggest though, that a 'larger scale' is where these good suggestions would have to follow from:

The world / the US / communities / individuals must rethink -each person- the idea of what Religion is For, what we really mean by the word diversity -- and give up entirely the now pervasive common theme:

Mine is the One True (Understanding).

Until this has become a humongous number of personal epiphanies (?) I don't believe that the rest of the work will even begin to start. That picture taken from the earliest moon landing, Earthrise tells us all we really need to know: of what our position is, on this one finite and unbounded sphere. We act from that revelation: alone worth any $$ spent to get there, or we shall soon nuke selves (and the innocent flora & fauna) into oblivion. We know how to do this.

Ashton

Post #83,045 by tuberculosis 2/20/03 8:54:22 PM Reply	Book Recommendation and Answer A couple years ago my grandmother gave me this book for x-mas. I took it with me as reading material on my trip to Cuba. The whole thing was kind of an eye opener. [link\|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/039332169X/qid=1045791056/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-8291099-5077435\|http://www.amazon.co...3-8291099-5077435] Berman carefully develops his view on what is wrong with US Culture (a lot of his thesis is that there isn't any - instead we have commerce). So what to do? In the other responses so far I see lots of immediate concrete things to work on. This is OK and I think they are worth working on. But I also see them as symptoms of bigger problems. The number one problem with the US right now is greed and selfishness. Its pervasive. The heroes are CEOs. The big stories are about how people have one little idea and get rich from it. The whole society is geared towards consumption and the "I got mine - get your own" attitude dominates. What a sucky way to live. I got an email this week that my elementary school gym teacher is retiring soon. I had to write him a letter because this guy made the school the center of a community. There were evening movies, family potlucks, fund raising talent shows, family ethnic dinners (bring something your grandma made in the old country) and a friday after school floor hockey league. We knew our neighbors. I haven't known my neighbors since I left college. The best thing you can do to improve the US is go volunteer at your neighborhood school. Go teach something. Our educational system has been replaced by cable TV. [link\|http://www.thespot.org/\|This guy] has at least a piece of the puzzle. The government is meant to reflect the will of the people. What frightens me is that, maybe this one does. Have to change that first. I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customer got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don't become missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don't feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What's in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more. --Alan Perlis
Post #83,123 by Ashton 2/21/03 7:29:44 AM Reply	Can only add - This review from your link, A slightly forbidding introduction to a book, but indicative of its author's disgust at the homogenized McWorld in which we live, and an enticing challenge to read on. As the title The Twilight of American Culture suggests, Morris Berman's outlook is somewhat bleak. Analogizing the contemporary United States to the late Roman Empire, Berman sees a nation fat on useless consumption, saturated with corporate ideology, and politically, psychically, and culturally dulled. But he believes that this behemoth--what Thomas Frank called the "multinational entertainment oligopoly"--must buckle under its own weight. His hope for a brighter tomorrow lies in a modern monastic movement, in which keepers of the enlightenment flame resist the constant barrage of "spin and hype." Ironically, despite his disdain for "the fashionable patois of postmodernism," he approvingly quotes poststructuralist theorist Jean-Fran\ufffdois Lyotard's maxim "elitism for everybody" in describing this cadre of idiosyncratic, literate devotees, these new monks. Berman is plainspoken and occasionally caustic. The Twilight of American Culture is an informed and thought-provoking book, a wake-up call to a nation whose powerful minority has become increasingly self-satisfied as their stock options ripen, while an underclass that vastly outnumbers the e-generation withers on the vine and cannot locate itself on any map. It is a quick and savage read that aims to get your eyes off this computer, your nose out of that self-help book, and send you back to thought and action. --J.R. And: it's pointless to imagineer any form of, "what the world ought to do"; hell, it's probably almost as pointless to echo! the Self-Help scourge and.. get very specific about the 12 x 12-Step program Muricans might... want to audition. You have included already the more important ones (IMhO). I'd suggest though, that a 'larger scale' is where these good suggestions would have to follow from: The world / the US / communities / individuals must rethink -each person- the idea of what Religion is For, what we really mean by the word diversity -- and give up entirely the now pervasive common theme: Mine is the One True (Understanding). Until this has become a humongous number of personal epiphanies (?) I don't believe that the rest of the work will even begin to start. That picture taken from the earliest moon landing, Earthrise tells us all we really need to know: of what our position is, on this one finite and unbounded sphere. We act from that revelation: alone worth any $$ spent to get there, or we shall soon nuke selves (and the innocent flora & fauna) into oblivion. We know how to do this. Ashton
Post #83,240 by Brandioch 2/21/03 5:38:48 PM Reply	On order.

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