Customer Reviews

Dark Age Ahead

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1 star:		(7)

 

 

Jane Jacobs claims that an argument can be made that we reside on the precipice of a new dark age. She provides a very useful outline upon which such an argument could be structured. But she does not make the argument herself. It seems like Ms. Jacobs is using this book to plant the seeds of an idea that she hopes others will step up to germinate and grow. If you are at all skeptical about its premise, this book probably won't do anything for you. The arguments will seem scattered, and the examples will seem superficial at best and irrelevant at worst. But if you are at all open to the dark age notion, or think it is feasible (as I have for a number of years),then the book may be a nice aid in helping you to organize your reading and thinking to better build a case for this haunting premise. Hopefully, some of the rest of us will pick up Jacobs' notion and give it the full treatment it deserves...

The West is living "The Hazard" of an impending "Dark Age", unable to anticipate clearly because of widespread "mass amnesia". The Dark Age is predictable from history, which shows that each major collapse of civilization was followed by a disturbing social transformation. The Dark Age Ahead (the book) agrees in part with Jared Diamond's account that Mesopotamia, for example, fell to ruins because of "environmental ignorance" (p. 15), but that was not the whole story. Part of the story is that there are cultural failings that have signaled the decline of major civilizations in the past, which offer lessons for the present and forecasts for the future.

In that connection the book identifies five factors that jeopardize pillars of the culture of the West, where West = North America + Western Europe. The five factors are: (a) the destruction of the traditional family and community; (b) the replacement of education by credentialization; (c) the dominance of technology over science; (d) the overpowering government and its opaque taxation system; and (e) the loss of self-policing attributes of culture. These factors constitute "The Hazard" society is currently facing, and are the subjects of the chapters of the book.

The superimposition of the household (economic family unit) over the nuclear family (biological family unit) has condemned many a family to failure. So "while politicians, clergy, creators of advertisement, and other worthies assert stoutly that the family is the foundation of society, the nuclear family, as an institution is currently in grave trouble" (p. 29). By blurring the difference between the nuclear family and other household units the automobile industry has done more harm to the family institution than illegal drugs.

The replacement of education with credentialization also threatens the West. Nowadays computer technology and engineering are preferred to computer science. As a result you now have skillful computer operators who do not understand the basic scientific principles behind a computer. Employers fund certification programs because they are presently good for the bottom line. Universities and colleges have bought into the credential subculture. Essentially both employers and educational institutions are destroying the scientific basis of Western culture. Truly educated people get no jobs, and "the worst side effect of unemployment is repeated rejection, with its burden of shame and failure" (p. 53).

Just as it happened in Mesopotamia, and early China, science is increasingly being abandoned for profit. The pursuit of profit is stifling the pursuit of pure science that drove early scientists. At the same time society has also abandoned two principles that are key to cultural vigor: "subsidiarity" and "accountability". The latter refers to a people's government in Abe Lincoln's sense; the latter to a transparent tax collecting system. Local government has become dysfunctional; tax revenues are either down or misused, and the production of public goods and services suffers and innovations decline. People needing public assistance are exposed to the cruelties of the Invisible Hand. Thus, "aid failure promotes instability and terrorism" (p. 124) and the dire consequences are predictable.

The subversion of self-policing professional organizations as exemplified by the Enron financial scandal is another sign of the Dark Age Ahead. It all boils down to the idea that "when efficiency becomes the sole goal of a culture, and the "redundancy of nurturers ... [is] eliminated (sic) as an extravagance, ... the vicious spirals go into action [leading surely to] self-inflicted cultural genocide" (p. 160).

The last chapter summarizes the book by describing the "patterns of the Dark Age". The hunter-gather culture was overtaken by the agricultural society. Losers in that take-over experienced a stressful cultural transformation, but soon people forgot until agriculture was "destroyed" by the industrial culture, and that one is gone too. Now human capital accumulation is the culture, but the poor cannot afford investment in the education required to build human capital, and government is either too broke or unwilling to help them. Even for those who can afford an education, education itself is no longer available, having been replaced by the credential subculture. Thus, the Dark Age is written on the wall, for "[a]ny culture that jettisons the values that have given it competence, adaptability, and identity becomes weak and hollow. A culture can avoid that hazard only by tenaciously retaining the underlying values responsible for [its] nature and success" (p. 176). Poignant!

A gloomier than hopeful book; a little below the stellar standard the author set with her previous book - The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Still the scholarship is high, and the message worth reading.

Amavilah, Author
Modeling Determinants of Income in Embedded Economies
ISBN: 1600210465

Jane Jacobs wrote "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" in 1961 stating that neighborhoods would be the pulse and soul of city life. City planners and engineers tried their best to laugh her out of town but lo and behold her wisodm of almost everything she had to say came true.

This book now focuses on the five crucial weak spots in the foundation of contemporary life in the West: taxes; community & family; higher education; science and technology; and the lack of self-policing by learned professions. She then argues that these problems lie behind more conventional trouble spots: the environment, crime, and the discrepancy between rich and poor.

My only problem with this book is that she's rather brusque in regards to shoring up her arguments with examples. The book does offer some nice insights for one to ponder on but as far as looking for examples, try turning to your own life experience.

She isn't a historian nor is this book intended to be a historical review of what one may assume as the Dark Ages of the past.

If you're concerned with America's changing culture and changing climate and can keep an open mind, this book could serve as a stepping stone.

In her customary clear-headed fashion Jane Jacobs has written a brief but brilliant summary of the reasons why Western culture is facing a Dark Age. In short chapters (supplemented by copious notes and further details at the end) she examines the decline of the family structure, the breakdown of community, the discarding of education in favor of "credentialing", and other warning signs of decline.

Jacobs is always clear minded and often witty. She makes the same point again and again: decline is not so much a failure of society or of structure as it is of imagination, our inability or unwillingness to look beyond the immediate problem or to consider unusual but promising alternatives. Sometimes the solution is so obvious as to be overlooked, such as that the reason for a high death toll among the elderly in one Chicago neighborhood during a heat wave was not neglect or failure to provide information, but rather that there was no viable community to give the support and help that was needed.

Jacobs will not please those who have permanently bound themselves to either the Left or Right, but those of us able to look beyond ideology in search of real solutions will find much to ponder here.

Once again, with all of her usual brilliance, insight, logic and wisdom, Jacobs has produced a fascinating book; unfortunately, her talents in analyzing city life is a slender reed upon which she trys to support her indictment of modern society.

Canada may well be in as dramatic a decline as she asserts; by all indications, the country has been slipping slowly since the departure of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1993. However, the decline and fall of Canada is not necessarily the pattern for the decline and fall of civilisation -- regardless of the level of civilisation in Canada. Canada has had a de facto one-party rule since the 1930s, and like Cuba, North Korea and Haiti, the domination by one political party or one economic class does not produce continuing prosperity.

Jacobs states "a large part of the country is economically stagnant or declining" in describing Canada, then lapses into the Oswald Spengler syndrome. Spengler, the German historian whose faith in his homeland was shattered by its World War I defeat, based his book "The Decline of the West" on that collapse. Since Canada has no military to speak of, she blames a cabal of unnamed neoconservatives, similar to the right-wing pseudo-intellectuals in the White House who are blamed for every stupid mistake made by George Bush (as if he wasn't dumb enough to make his own mistakes every now and then).

Her book is greatly weakened by her inability, and she hints the inability of anyone in Canada, to know how the heavy taxes collected by the federal government are spent. She is definitely right that Canada is declining; for example, Statistics Canada reports a crime rate of 9,907 offenses per 100,000 people in 1990; this compares to a crime rate of 5,900 in the US. She writes of Toronto, Canada's richest city, where she lives, as having "a disquieting surliness or public sullenness; impatience, impoliteness, rage. These are more subtle signs that Toronto has become a city in crisis, indeed in multiple crises." It's a sorry decline since I lived there in the 1960s.

If Canada is the miner's canary of the civilized world, then we're all in deep trouble. But what of Britain? When British Rail grew tired of constant breakdowns of its aging diesel locomotives, they bought new ones made in London, Ontario (in a US branch plant). On any given day, one quarter of British-built locomotives are out of service; compared to only 5 percent of the Canadian locomotives. Somebody in Canada must be doing something right.

Jacobs seems intent on finding bad examples, and there are plenty in any society. She's one of the most astute observers of the human condition, so this may not be merely senior citizen grumpiness. In this case, to misquote a famed Dorothy Parker review, "This book should not be set aside lightly, it should be considered with great force."

Personally, I think she's dead wrong. I considered her basic premise wrong before I began reading the book; nothing I read changed my limited acumen, and I'll re-read the book because I think it's that good. Whether you agree with her or not, Jacobs is well worth reading. But I really, sincerely, fervently, passionately, hope she's wrong.

The title is not a question mark. Though it seems much of the content of this book is conditional upon, etc etc., the outcome of the next few decades is not very bright.

Why would you read it? Well, it caught my interest because I have never formalized my understanding of the "Dark Ages". Some have said that they weren't all that dark, just not that Christian. I was curious. It seems, however, that except for a privileged few, they were rather dark, indeed. Our author, Jane Jacobs, also finds the Dark Ages in process around the world today. Most of her analysis is based upon cities and their ways. She is well known for her book titled "The Death and Life of Great American Cities."

The book is not some generic, theologically based diatribe against the de-evolution of human culture. It is an opinion, based on a lot of experience, observation and insight into the ways of modern culture.

Unfortunately, the solutions offered tend to be unlikely. They are based on a sense of community that is only found on the "Green Turtle." Some of you may know what that means. Today we seem to be able to die for our country but we want to move to the suburbs when we get back from the war. So we will probably lose this war against the deterioration of excellence. Our democratic substitute is the "best negotiable solution" and that will not be enough.

Ok, so, in the process of serving Rome, Europe served itself as well. I read somewhere that Spanish urine, yes, human, was the preferred mouthwash in Rome. Truth be known, it is probably a better mouthwash than we might think, but not really as good as they thought. It was harvested (easier than selling your blood), shipped and marketed in the center of the world. In myriads of ways Rome was the center of gravity of a huge complex that worked better for everybody than what followed, the Dark Ages.

The first chapter, "The Hazard," is a description of those dark days in Western Culture. Chapter 8 also fills us in on the Dark Ages as they might be seen today. It's worth buying the book for those chapters alone. At the end of "The Hazard" she gives us her Gospel, the 5 critical, jeopardized, pillars of a sustaining cultural profile.

They are:

Community and family
Higher education
The effective practice of science and science-based technology
Taxes and governmental powers directly in touch with needs and possibilities
The self-policing of the learned professions.
The following chapters discuss each of these pillars and how they are being corrupted by..., by what? The sin nature? The matrix meltdown? Not doing one's duty? The peculiar American self-absorption of prosperity? Well, read the book to get your own impression of the critical dynamic at the various levels of society. Of course, if you don't read the book you are part of the problem.

Just kidding. Well, maybe there is a little truth there (you are reading the review, that's a start). Simple things, small things, daily things are good indicators of where a culture is going. Why do we gain weight? It's not the binges but that little extra every day that accumulates. It's available and "you are worth it".

Our author names the automobile as the chief destroyer of family and community, both by the life-style it creates and the space needed to accommodate it. She says that a third category of community resources is actual speaking relationships with people or neighbors who are not necessarily friends. What about a real conspiracy: General Motors buys electric trolley transit systems to convert them to motor-powered bus systems? (pp 38-41)

Ever thought that your college degree was a joke? It's no joke when you go to apply for a job, is it? Ms. Jacobs' discussion of higher education as critical to a self-sustaining culture centers around the difference between education and certification. "Credentialing as opposed to educating" is how she puts it.

"Science abandoned" is the chapter dedicated to the decay in the practice of science and science-based technology. This is a great review on the politics and bureaucracy of science as it seeks to respond to the needs of culture. Yes, you will feel superior as she illustrates some of the stupid things smart people are capable of, and how serendipity and common sense often show us what we need to do (if a problem is not high-tech, perhaps the solution is not either). I remember a sitcom back in the 50's where the star of the show, a housekeeper for a wealthy family, was asked to test a disposable frying pan. She said the pan was fine but that real cooks become attached to their frying pans and would have no interest in the product. It had never occurred to marketing to ask beyond the value of disposability.

The final two pillars of self-taxation and honest experts are discussed in a similar way and are worth the read.

Her "notes and comments" makes you want to sit down with the lady and have a nice long chat.

Example:

"Acceptance and the belief by wrongdoers that "everybody does it" has become the great enemy of effective self-policing. But, fortunately, in reality, everybody does not do wrong. If everyone did, our civilization would have irretrievably collapsed."

This is a good book, and very readable. She's got a bit of attitude and that makes you feel like you should get on board in some way or other.

matero@pacifier.com

I found this book to be profound despite being unconvinced that North America, and specifically the United States, is headed for a "Dark Age." But, whatever. For me, her lack of evidence was not as important as her insights; and her ramble about the fluidity of life on the planet is great. Particularly interesting is her discussion of the far-reaching effects of the Great Depression.

This is a good introduction to the interrelatedness of economics, city planning, and the scientific method. It displays a kind of "everything is connected" thinking, popularized recently by the Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" and the film "What the Bleep Do We Know?" But readers who favor a kind of "grand statement" in their books should read one of Ms. Jacobs more celebrated books.

In this book, Jane Jacobs outlines five aspects of society today that, if unchecked, could lead us to a new Dark Age such as the one the Roman Empire experienced. These five aspects are: breakdown of communities, the tendency of universities to credential rather than educate, abandonment of the principles of science, distancing of taxing bodies from the people they serve, and breakdown in self-regulation and self-policing of learned professions.

Ms. Jacobs says that others might have picked five different aspects, and that these are just the ones that seemed important to her. Although she does explain why repairing each aspect is important in preventing a new dark age, much of the book seems to be about things that seem important to her or empirical observations she personally has made. There is little attempt to prove or substantiate any of her claims or to justify extrapolating her little observations to society at large. She seems to ignore the scientific rigor she says is so vital. After a while, she just kind of sounds like the elderly lady on the block who constantly says, "Back when I was a kid..."

Besides a lack of scholarly rigor, this book also seems to have a lack of crisp organization. The book is divided into chapters, but Ms. Jacobs regularly colors outside the lines. Combine that with her oddly punctuated, rambling sentences, and you do not have a recipe for readability.

Nonetheless, she does bring up some good points, particularly about not accepting commonly held notions at face value, about cherishing community, and about remembering where we all came from. For that, she gets a couple stars.

A brief, but thorough outline of the author's view of the direction that Western Civilization (American in particular) appears to be headed. However, unlike what the editorial reviews would've had me believe, I did not find very much optimism contained within. In fact, I found it rather depressing. The book spends six chapters outlining the problems and their "proofs" and a single thin chapter on what to do about it.

I suspect that like most poli-sci-economic-stuff that is found in "normal" bookstores, the intended audience is armchair philosophers, pundits, and anyone who can read that happens to reside in N. America or Western Europe (of which I must be one, as I've bothered to write this silly review). If so, then this book delivers, and in the best way possible.

Five "pillars of [Western] culture" are identified:
* Community and family
* Higher education
* Effective practice of science
* Taxes and governmental powers directly in touch with needs and possibilities
* Self-policing by learned professions

Each has a chapter devoted to explaining how it is under assault. This may sound dry, but the author's style is conversational and the medicine goes down easy. Each chapter is a comfortable, rambling, casually meandering journey to the point. And along the way it forces one to think critically. (Perhaps Jane Jacobs is the Mary Poppins of economics. Anyhow...)

The book was insightful and inspirational. By the time I was finished, I'd written a ton of questions and notes for further exploration. Perhaps this is the optimistic quality mentioned by other reviewers.

Unfortunately, I wan't impressed with the final chapter, "Unwinding vicious spirals". It just isn't enough. As is typical, it is easy to point out problems, but difficult to provide solutions. Then again, perhaps it would be a waste of time to try to provide a one-size-fits-all solution as each situation is different and requires local resources to be freed to step-up and solve the problem for themselves. Reading the book will help clarify that last statement.

Hopefully, the solution defficiency will help inspire the smarter people of my generation to arrive at solutions that expand upon the core of the ideas presented in the chapter. I'm deffinately not one of those, but at least it inspired me to look into many of the ideas and perhaps contribute some small thing.

Highly recommended, if only to impress your friends around the watercooler with concepts such as "import replacement" and "jitneys vs. tradtional mass transit". (It'll also make you cooler, and better looking!)

Ms Jacobs has many valid points, and all are interesting and probably valid; however, the material lacks coherence as presented. The notes at the end would be very useful for the basis of further study of her topics.