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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bulls-eye!, June 3, 2006
This review is from: A Nation Gone Blind: America in an Age of Simplification and Deceit (Paperback)
Eric Larson's A Nation Gone Blind is a passionately argued, meticulously documented assault upon the culture of political correctness which has, Larson argues, reduced the study of literature at the university level to politicized ritual. I cannot do justice to the elaborate case he lays out in each of these three essays, but he makes it clear that this is no arcane academic issue. He sees the abduction of the humanities by a generation of militant politicos (who, ironically, found their voices during the anti-war, anti-establishement sixties)as a manifestation of a pervasive blight within American culture. Our vitality as "free agents" has been sapped by group-think within the university and by obsessive consumerism and mass media mind-candy without, putting our democracy itself at risk. Thus, with our long tradition of "intellectual liberalism" now comatose and a radical minority in power, it is no wonder that we tend to doze with the pack as folly after folly, from Washington to Baghdad, flashes across our screens. This is indeed a rarity -- a book about ideas that manages to be a page-turner. It is as provocative, timely, and exhilarating as The End of Faith by Sam Harris -- another essential read for those still paying attention.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Guilty of the Same Crime?, August 12, 2006
This review is from: A Nation Gone Blind: America in an Age of Simplification and Deceit (Paperback)
As I read Eric Larsen's book, I found myself riveted by his arguments. He clearly articulates, and even proposes solutions, to several of the root causes of the decline of American Culture. But the very importance of this work is diminished because it is not scholarly. Never is Larsen more vital as when he writes about the destruction that television and the mass media has wreaked on American society and the ability of Americans to think critically. Early on in the first essay he explains how half-truths are sold as full-truths, the basis of the "Deciet" portion of his subtitle. A perfect example from today's news is to listen to George Bush blame the current middle east conflict on nothing more than Hezbollah's cross-border excursion and kidnapping of an Israeli soldier. That's a half-truth being sold as the whole truth. The conflict has a long and complicated history with numerous causes on both sides. A quote from Alain Badiou's essay "Philosophy and Desire" from his book Infinite Thought supports Larsen: "Our world also exerts a strong pressure on the dimension of logic; essentially because the world is submitted to the profoundly illogical regime of communication. Communication transmits a universe made up of disconnected images, remarks, statements and commentaries whose accepted principle is incoherence....And what is perhaps even more distressing, presents the world to us as a spectacle devoid of memory, a spectacle in which new images and new remarks cover, erase and consign to oblivion the very images and remarks that have just been shown and said..." Larsen has it right - we live in an age of simplification and deceit. George Bush gives us a variation of sorts on the idea the a lie well told and stuck to is as good as the truth. In this case, a half-truth repeated often enough and left unchallenged becomes the full-truth. Bush repeated this half-truth at a news conference held in Crawford Texas recently; as is his style, he repeated it repeatedly. Unfortunately, not one reporter challenged it. Critical thought is lost. Throughout the book Larsen makes important points about the loss of empiricism, the rise of victim studies, the end of literary thinking, and the death of the meaningful self. But I'm not going to quote from the book - and there are many wonderful quotes to be had - to highlight the major problem I have with Larsen. Larsen constantly commits the same sin that he deplores. He generalizes, he arm-waves, and he doesn't support his arguments with facts, footnotes, or a bibiliography! His over-generalizations are so glaring that they left me wondering just how widespread the problems are. He talks about the advent of the "new professors" and the death of literary studies but never does he tell us who some of the most important "new professors' are, at what universities they teach, and how many university literature departments have they taken over. I find it very difficult to believe that the "new professors" are in charge at every campus and that literary studies are dead throughout higher education. But this is exactly the picture Larsen paints. Larsen discusses the negative impact of mass media - he should cite a reference of two. Larsen decries the rise of consumerism - he should cite a reference or two. Larsen believes the rise of victim studies has hurt the humanities - he should cite a reference or two. Larsen is surely intelligent, but he is not scholarly. He asks the reader to take his arguments on faith, with out providing sources for our own empirical research. This is exactly what he tells us we should NOT do. He says that we must think critically. But Larsen wants us to accept his unsupported generalizations based solely on his own stature, his own observations. I can't end this review with out voicing my one point of major disagreement. Larsen sees no value in African-American, women, or gay studies as an independent area of scholarly pursuit. He feels that because all of these topics can be addressed with the fields of history, sociology, psychology and so forth, they should not be a separate area of study. Interdisciplinary Studies is the fundamental focus of a liberal arts education. It is a sad generalization to say the people who pursue a degree in African-American or Gay studies are trying to perpetuate or claim the suffering of the groups they are studying. Hogwash. Minority issues are legitimately studied in an effort to seek understanding and solutions to suffering. They can be, and hopefully are, studied by scholarly and academic means that make original contributions to knowledge, thereby legitimately warranting the specialization and the award of higher degrees. Bottomline: This is an enormously important book. The points it makes are critical. We must think about these very issues and act upon them if we are to survive as a meaningful society.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Blame this state of affairs on literature professors?, May 11, 2006
This review is from: A Nation Gone Blind: America in an Age of Simplification and Deceit (Paperback)
This book strongly contends that American society is being dominated by an alarming pairing of government and corporations with the mass media as their propaganda arm and, furthermore, that institutions of higher learning, especially humanities departments, contribute to an overall dumbing down of our culture. The purpose of the mass media is to entertain and obfuscate, appeal to emotion over thinking, not distinguish half-truths and lies from the truth, and above all promote unrestrained consumerism. In such an age of simplification, as the author so labels it, it is entirely possible for a presidential candidate to seize an election and power via a judicial coup and to invade a nation of no consequence with scarcely a ripple of protest from the American citizenry. While there can be little dispute that there has been a general degradation of the perceptiveness and independence of the American people, the author undermines his claim for reasoned judgment by indulging in an apparently long held desire to skewer his fellow writers and professors of literature. Now retired, there is no holding back. He contends that literature should be "experienced" by individuals, not groups, and that attempts by professors to ascribe meaning, especially of social or political import to an afflicted group, are counterproductive for the education of the student. However, given the subtle social and political control, acknowledged by the author, that is exerted by powerful entities in the current world, one would think that he would applaud efforts to understand the social and political context of the authors' worlds, the settings of their stories, and any relevance to the current world. Such understandings do not preclude further interpretation and experience with the works. He seems to feel that the incorrect teaching of literature directly translates into a non-thinking public. More understandable is the author's concern with the widespread introduction of various departments devoted to the study of women, blacks, gays, etc. That has been done concurrent with the rise of political correctness on college campuses. He suggests that these studies are based primarily on these distinct groups being seen as victims. The concern is that such studies produce a limited and stilted result. The book consists of three chapters or essays. There is considerable overlap and repetition with the author meandering over the terrain of a simplified and dumbed down culture and what he believes is the contribution of higher education to that general state. But he hardly exhausts what could be considered. For example, one might want to ask why a university is even necessary to read literature; he does emphasize the individual experience. What's his view on unnecessary credentialism? He claims that the culture starting being dumbed down in 1947 at the beginning of the Cold War. Of course, not uncoincidentally, that was the beginning of the television era, the main component of the mass media. However, what is the evidence for the greater enlightenment of the public prior to that time? The author does not indicate what a wise people should now be doing, short of not electing George Bush. How should a wise people recapture their society from the corporate-government-media complex? The book is thought provoking, but it is largely devoted to settling scores with colleagues that he thinks have agendas or, worse, are supportive of victimology studies. After a while, the harangue gets old.
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