Customer Reviews

Requiem For Modern Politics: The Tragedy Of The Enlightenment And The Challenge Of The New Millennium

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Finally, I understand much of the confusing stuff at the end of the 20th century. This is a foundational book - it should be required as a text for MBA students and venture capitalists, as well as for political and social leaders. It is a must read for anyone who wants to make sense of modern life and make a positive future in the 21st century. It is not just about the bankruptcy of politics or environmental peril. To me it explains the disintegrating Modern Age culture, science, business, and education as well. When you look at the basics of the Modern Age, as Ophuls does, it looks really GOOFY and we will not miss it when it is gone. It amazes me that we could have been hoodwinked for the 500 years since the Italian Renaissance humanism, the Protestant Reformation spiritual privatization and the lonely crowd of mass marketed individualism of materialistic-capitalism. Requiem for Modern Politics can be a real cause for hope - when combined with insights from books on internet community-making, on the new science of self-organizing systems, on the wide spread spiritual search for meaning and on intellectual capital (ideas as the decentralized human source of power in the 21st century). Ophuls book is the missing link that pulls it all together - the time, technology and spirituality are now ready for us all to make a Grand Jailbreak from the crumbling Modern Age prison. A new spiritualized, community-caring, environmentally sustainable and intellectual-capital capitalism is the realistic answer implied in between the lines of Requiem for Modern Politics. A companion book to plan your jailbreak is The Resurgence of the Real by Charlene Spretnak

It is all too symptomatic of the present state of intellectual discussion (and publishing) that Ophuls' Requiem for Modern Politics appeared in 1998 and still remains largely unknown in 2000. I can think of few books in recent years that are more provocative in challenging the operative assumptions of our culture. Ophuls take the reader on a quite readable journey through the present crisis of liberalism, uttering unpopular truths as he sees them, without falling into reflexive conservatism or stereotyped radicalism. This is most likely the key to why the book has received so little notice: it undercuts the worldview from which most critics deliver their opinions and refuses to salute the reigning myths of our time. It is probably a minor miracle that the book has even seen print in the first place, albeit with an unduly tame cover design and no apparent promotional budget.

If you are disturbed by the direction that our culture is going, whether you locate yourself on the left or right (or neither), I urge you to check this book out and prepare yourself for a stimulating shock.