Product Details

• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 2
• Studio: Vision Video
• VHS Release Date: August 10, 1999
• Run Time: 221 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0788601024
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #329,023 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must-See: 'Grasping for the Wind', October 11, 1999

By 

Mr. Cal Thomas - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grasping for the Wind [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., wants to establish a bipartisan congressional committee to investigate the causes for our cultural decline. It's a good idea.

Brownback can save some time by viewing a new video series created by Rutherford Institute President John Whitehead (yes, Paula Jones' lawyer) titled "Grasping for the Wind."

The seven-part series looks at the historic, intellectual, artistic and social forces that have contributed to Western humanity's cultural crisis. It is a sweeping work that covers such events as the two world wars, Vietnam and the Great Depression and traces how underlying philosophical concepts in art, music, science and world events have helped shape the present world view, which is now being taught to yet another generation.

This is no polemic. It is a serious, highly informative work that is even entertaining. It asks humanity's ancient questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I headed? The series asserts that modern man can no longer answer these questions, and the result is a chaotic world in which young people search for meaning in alcohol, drugs, promiscuity and violence.

New orthodoxies that have failed replaced old orthodoxies that mostly worked. Yet those responsible for the new orthodoxies do not want to relinquish their power, and so they persist in the failed ways, even as children kill and are killed.

Attending school can now be more dangerous than crossing the street used to be.

If life has no objective meaning, the series suggests, then it means only what someone says it means at the moment, and that can change as quickly as wind direction. With no anchor in their lives, many young people see schooling itself as irrelevant, especially since the process is frequently barred from offering significant guidance. The First Amendment, you know.

"Grasping for the Wind" traces humanity's search for meaning over the last 200 years and is shot on location where the artists painted, philosophers thought and wrote and politicians schemed to dominate the planet by evil means. Familiar and not-so-familiar philosophers, writers, painters and musicians are shown to have contributed far more than their art to the cultural decay.

The series ought to be mandatory viewing in homes and schools for it awakens and provokes thought in our image-obsessed age. More than most anything else I've seen recently, this series answers the old questions and presents profound new ones that must be answered in order to reverse what metal detectors, surveillance cameras and guards in the halls cannot reverse. The nihilism that has dominated much of Western thought and culture for the last two centuries is the cause behind the school shootings and other social tragedies. "Grasping for the Wind" exposes many of them.

It may seem pricey, but you won't think so when you view it. What it provides in one package is priceless.

It will be disappointing if the decline continues and we stubbornly cling to ideas that have not worked and cannot. No new laws, no studies, no commissions, not even congressional panels, can reverse the slide. In order to chart a new course, we have to know how we got to where we are. "Grasping for the Wind" is a mirror reflecting the past and, for those who will take it, a road map out of the pit.

Los Angeles Times Syndicate

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Original, engaging, innovative, visually stunning., May 4, 2000

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grasping for the Wind [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Written, directed and hosted by John Whitehead, Grasping For The Wind is a 2-tape, seven-part, boxed set the explores the different ways Western philosophers, writers, artists, filmmakers, politicians and musicians have attempted to answer the question of what gives human beings a sense of intrinsic worth. Grasping For The Wind takes examines contemporary cultural responses to the modern crises of Western humanity from World Wars and the Great Depression to the Oklahoma City bombing, and human cloning. This remarkable, informative, insightful, inviting, and thought-provoking chronicle of twentieth century art, literature, film, music, politics and philosophy as culture altering influences present a rare and serious discussion of humanities search for meaning in an original, engaging, innovative approach that is visually stunning and intellectually challenging. Grasping For The Wind is a highly recommended addition to academic and community library video collections.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Summary Documentary of the Century, September 19, 2004

By 

Dr. T.A. Behrens (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grasping for the Wind [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I constantly refer students and other researchers to this video set for an answer to, "How did we get here??" I can understand why new-world leftists don't like this series -- it is clear idenfication of the experiments that has gone wrong in the militant liberal ideal. Rather than learn from history, the nature of the hard-left is to move ahead at an accelarating pace and I think the final 5 min. of the movie points this -out.

The two-tape series takes the viewer brilliantly through major world art museums with art historian and constitutional attorney John Whitehead (of the Rutherford Institute in WVa.). It starts with Voltaire (1700's) and moves through several developmental eras all the way through the postmodern.

A must-see for any student. For anyone who likes history or does not, this is a wealth of knowledge and can be viewed again-and-again. It is by far the best summary of the transitional eras in Western thought I have ever seen.