Still Declining and Falling
by Paul Christensen
Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire
By Morris Berman
W.W. Norton, $25.95
Morris Berman is a messenger bringing bad news about the coming end of the American empire, which he estimates will occur around the year 2040. We are heading over the cliff because of uncontrolled trade deficits, a “negative identity” that feeds on war against weak nations, a fatuous culture of TV and empty movies, failed schools and pain-free universities, our shopping mania, a captive press, lost civil rights, lobbies that run Congress, and a Justice Department that freely rewrites Constitutional law. And we are a doomed society mainly because the public itself is no longer active or aware, and keeps re-electing the very people undermining its remaining freedoms.
“America takes away love and gives its citizens gadgets, in return, which most of them regard as a terrific bargain,” Berman writes. The “sacred cow” in the United States is the American people: “Anything has the force of biblical revelation if it is ascribed to this mystical, all-knowing entity.” Berman prefers Nicholas von Hoffman’s assessment of that same populace as “asses, dolts, and blockheads,” or as “bobbleheads in bubbleland.”
And the critics and some bloggers want to kill the messenger. Writing her review of Dark Ages for The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani, the Iron Lady of review columns, could hardly contain her rage over Berman’s calling America names. “He is smugly fatalistic and sweepingly dismissive of political debate,” she writes, calling him “indiscriminate and intemperate” and opening her review with a salvo: “This is a book that gives the Left a bad name.”
There is a deep intolerance for even the best writers of Berman’s tradition. When Walt Whitman wrote Democratic Vistas three years after the Civil War, he concluded that the nation had learned nothing from the war’s massacres; instead, he wrote, the peace that followed was a time of anarchy and greed. His words were not welcome. He predicted the coming of the Gilded Age, and suspected the war may have been fought for reasons other than the liberation of slaves—namely, to construct a national economy with the corporations that Berman tells us in his book Twilight of American Culture and now, six years later in Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire, are killing democracy and ending civilization as we knew it.
Behind Berman is a host of American prophets of gloom like Thorstein Veblen, coiner of the phrase “conspicuous consumption”; Theodore Dreiser, who once noted (in his 1916 memoir A Hoosier Holiday) that any American given the choice between two houses will always choose the uglier of the two; Mark Twain, of course; Frank Lloyd Wright, who, asked about the state of American architecture, suggested tilting the country up on its California edge and sweeping all the buildings into the Atlantic. Sinclair Lewis is on the list with his notion of Babbitt as the quintessential, gadget-loving bourgeois; and H.L. Mencken, who gave us the immortal names for the middle class, the “booboisie,” and “the Bible belt” for southern Christians. The list is long and populous, with cranks and voices crying in the wilderness. One can add the literally hundreds of disillusioned historians, sociologists, philosophers, and writers whose work is liberally cited throughout Berman’s latest diatribe. He is not alone in saying we are rushing to our own destruction.
Over Berman’s shoulder is Oswald Spengler, author of The Decline of the West (1918), and before him, the 18th century English historian Edward Gibbon, who wrote The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, an attack on organized religion and an ironic commentary on Roman hubris and its consequences as England was launching her own empire. Decline is a frequent reference in Berman’s arguments. This is thinking with the “big picture,” and it should come as no surprise that Berman earned his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins, home of Arthur O. Lovejoy’s “History of Ideas” program, in which cultural movements are charted from dark and obscure origins dating as far back the 6th century. No one remotely touched by Lovejoy can think in terms of decades or world wars.
Dark Ages covers the full-scale anatomy of how America went wrong. Berman reaches back to the land-grabbing and stony individualism of the colonial period, citing religious sources and observing how Puritan ledgers were headed “in the name of God and profit” each day. Towns from their inception were mere transit points for people looking to make money, not community. Borders were porous, and the deep urge of the first Americans was to move up, buy real estate as a commodity, and when the economy failed, move west. This left the country in tatters under a veil of supposed coherence and patriotism.
Berman argues that all across the history of the country, empty slogans and false promises covered over the anarchic mayhem and violence of a people jostling for personal advantage and little else. Once corporations absorbed all this energy under the collective powers of huge legal entities, the force of runaway capitalism grew ominous and began to erode the powers of government to rule or control the marketplace. All values devolved into market values; nothing possessed inherent meaning.
If the Great Depression slowed things down for a while, with federal restraints on the stock exchanges and big business, the lesson didn’t last very long. Berman argues that our downfall really occurred when Richard Nixon abrogated the Bretton Woods Agreement (limiting the fluctuation of foreign currencies, with the dollar pegged to the value of gold) in 1971. Oceans of capital began to wash into America’s banks, with the immediate consequence of investors pulling back money from American manufacturers, to avoid the expenses of taxes, pensions, and medical bills, and turning instead to plunder Third World countries for cheap human labor. In turn, that pulled the plug on most cities, which saw their tax bases shrink as unemployment, crime, and vagrancy soared.
But the disintegration began earlier. To soak up loneliness, the car was invented at precisely the moment in which cities were losing their shape and meaning. Americans took to the road, and soon radio filled the evenings in lieu of friendly chats with neighbors. The television peddled corporate wares to an overworked, jaded public no longer interested in plays, symphonies, or music played in local parks. Isolation and boredom became the constants of American life, with work taking up most of the week. The result was alienation from all forms of civic participation, and a corresponding numbness toward changing the situation.
According to Berman, presidents Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bushes senior and junior, and Clinton are all villains of modern political history, the undertakers of American society as they rig small wars to keep us distracted. The one exception is Jimmy Carter, a modest redeemer, who emerges as a sort of hero who tried to slow down corporate and military expansion, and to hold back the forces that would usurp government in the name of free enterprise. After that, le déluge. The worst of times has come with the election and re-election of George W. Bush. Berman reserves his real fire until this moment. He describes Bush as a “dry drunk,” a “man-boy unable to empathize,” and a Christian fundamentalist sadist.
The closing chapters of this dark book argue there is no way to turn back the doomsday clock on America; forces are too well aligned to stop the final disintegration and collapse of the nation. “A world awash in suburbs and shopping malls, television and sensationalism, cell phones and Burger King, Prozac and violence, fundamentalist Christianity and sink-or-swim ethics, is no vision for the future.” Of course, Berman was writing this book in the grim aftermath of the Bush re-election, when Republicans held both houses of Congress. It looked darker than it does today, with Democrats back in power and already making changes in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s first “100 Hours.” Who knows, it could get a little better before Berman’s doomsday clock tolls midnight?
The danger of writing a book on the political moment, regardless of how wide the historical canvas, is that when things do change, contradictions ensue. The midterm elections demonstrated that the American people are rethinking their faith in Bush and the Republicans. The cost of global warming may yet require us to be more realistic and join the rest of the world in holding back our hydrocarbon emissions. But modest signs don’t persuade me to think that we can muddle through much longer. China, India and the European Union are all poised to replace us as world powers by the midcentury; this much seems certain from what Berman and others are saying. While civilization itself may not crumble, the American empire seems doomed, something Berman suggests may not be such a bad thing.
The real importance of this book may not be in its predictions of America’s coming fall; we are already used to thinking our time on center stage is growing short. Too many mistakes, too many miscalculations, too much money spent on the military and security, not enough on our infrastructure. We understand that. What Berman achieves is a portrait of America as a collection of unassimilated immigrants unable to form a society because greed, an erroneous cult of individualism at any cost, and an indifference to our natural resources have made coherent life impossible. Our cities are half-dead, our mass transport is in ruins, and our lives are fragmented and dysfunctional. For the first time in our history, more women live alone than with partners, a sad commentary on social life. More children are on Prozac, some from early infancy, than in any other society. Work is meaningless and all-consuming for the average American, leaving no time for leisure or socializing. Berman brings all this together in compelling prose buttressed by massive reading and statistical authority.
Even if there is some truth in what some reviewers have been saying about Dark Ages, that it is held together with thin thread, too many quotes, too much dependence on hearsay and his own anecdotal evidence, the fact is, Berman is right. We are an unhappy, discordant, lonely nation glutted on bad food and junk from the malls; we are depressed and hide it behind drugs and prescription medicines. We live empty lives but confuse them with longings for bigger and better houses, more cars, more TV channels, more of everything but the modest solution of changing our fundamental orientation to life and turning back to community as our salvation. Berman wins this argument hands down. To object to his methods or his so-called intemperance plays into his hands—he says we are easily gulled by bromides and false promises, and hide from the reality that we are a decaying nation. What any reader should do after reading Dark Ages America is weep, and then ask how to protect oneself and lend a hand to a neighbor.
Paul Christensen is a poet and essayist who teaches modern literature and creative writing at Texas A&M. His new book, Strangers in Paradise: A Memoir of Provence, is due out in April from Wings Press of San Antonio.
April 06, 2007
March 08, 2007
November 10, 2006
Letter to an Ecstatic Liberal
I wrote the following in response to a letter from a friend of mine in the wake of the midterm elections of 7 November 2006. He was very excited about the Democrats having taken the House and the Senate; now, he assured me, everything was going to change. This is my reply:
Dear John:
I share your disgust of the GOP &c., but I'm not sure that very much has changed. This country has millions of Rumsfelds, millions of Bushes; they walk the streets of our great nation every day, and if we eliminate one particular Rummy or Bush, there is no doubt that they can be quickly replaced by clones (e.g. CIA-man Robert Gates, another useful idiot). Head of the Hydra, as the saying goes. Consider this:
1. According to the Miami Herald (11/8/06), the leading House Democrats say that there will be no cutting of funds for the war in Iraq. They also, in both the lead-up to the election and the aftermath, have never mentioned the words "withdrawal plan" or "timetable for withdrawal." The truth is that we are talking abt the difference between Empire and Empire Lite; big deal. The changes the Dems are now proposing deal with minimum wage and stem-cell research. Important? Maybe; but I see these as basically cosmetic. There is no addressing the fundamental error of globalization, US capitalism, and the agitated foreign policy that is typical of an empire in its death-throes. Any president who might try--think of Jimmy Carter--would be out the door in fairly short order.
2. The so-called shift to blue states is a mirage. After all, the great American people would be cheering Mr. Bush if Iraq had been a victory. They have no objection to an immoral foreign policy, or even a severely misguided one; they only think in terms of win or lose. Hence, the so-called liberal tilt in the House is due to the fact that at least 9 very conservative Dems won GOP seats--some tilt. As for the Senate, Va. was the swing state, and this by a mere 7,000 votes.
3. In the wake of the election, Nancy Pelosi vowed a "move to the center." I don't know if you've noticed, but since about 1978 the so-called center is on the far right. Arthur Schlesinger's famous argument about how the American people can only be wooed from the "vital center" remains true, except that that center is violent, stupid, and basically moribund. So she's moving to the center, but to what end? Recall that line from Gore Vidal: US politics consists of a single party with 2 right wings.
The bottom line: the US is broken; there ain't nothin' gonna fix it.
With kind regards,
Maury Berman
Dear John:
I share your disgust of the GOP &c., but I'm not sure that very much has changed. This country has millions of Rumsfelds, millions of Bushes; they walk the streets of our great nation every day, and if we eliminate one particular Rummy or Bush, there is no doubt that they can be quickly replaced by clones (e.g. CIA-man Robert Gates, another useful idiot). Head of the Hydra, as the saying goes. Consider this:
1. According to the Miami Herald (11/8/06), the leading House Democrats say that there will be no cutting of funds for the war in Iraq. They also, in both the lead-up to the election and the aftermath, have never mentioned the words "withdrawal plan" or "timetable for withdrawal." The truth is that we are talking abt the difference between Empire and Empire Lite; big deal. The changes the Dems are now proposing deal with minimum wage and stem-cell research. Important? Maybe; but I see these as basically cosmetic. There is no addressing the fundamental error of globalization, US capitalism, and the agitated foreign policy that is typical of an empire in its death-throes. Any president who might try--think of Jimmy Carter--would be out the door in fairly short order.
2. The so-called shift to blue states is a mirage. After all, the great American people would be cheering Mr. Bush if Iraq had been a victory. They have no objection to an immoral foreign policy, or even a severely misguided one; they only think in terms of win or lose. Hence, the so-called liberal tilt in the House is due to the fact that at least 9 very conservative Dems won GOP seats--some tilt. As for the Senate, Va. was the swing state, and this by a mere 7,000 votes.
3. In the wake of the election, Nancy Pelosi vowed a "move to the center." I don't know if you've noticed, but since about 1978 the so-called center is on the far right. Arthur Schlesinger's famous argument about how the American people can only be wooed from the "vital center" remains true, except that that center is violent, stupid, and basically moribund. So she's moving to the center, but to what end? Recall that line from Gore Vidal: US politics consists of a single party with 2 right wings.
The bottom line: the US is broken; there ain't nothin' gonna fix it.
With kind regards,
Maury Berman
September 30, 2006
August 08, 2006
Q&A with Washington Independent Writers
Q&A: Morris Berman
By Michael Causey, WIW Board Member
As a lauded social critic and cultural historian, Morris Berman is an acute observer of humanity and specifically America and Americans in the 21st century. He does not like much of what he sees. In his new book, Dark Ages America (W.W. Norton), he offers a heartfelt and depressingly convincing portrait of a nation in a Roman-style decline and a people adrift. It was not a surprise, in fact, to learn from Berman that the working title for the book was "Colossus Adrift."
The book is brave in that it does not promise any easy solutions. Indeed, Berman argues, perhaps the best we can hope for in a post 9-11 America, where civil liberties are being shredded and the gap between the rich and poor widens each day, is to slow our national decline and to fashion the softest possible landing.
WIW spoke with Berman in May in the midst of a book tour that included vibrant, well-attended stops in cities including D.C., San Francisco, and New York, as well as a surreal event in a Philadelphia bookstore where the three people in attendance had come thinking the book was written by a noted ophthalmologist.
Berman has been visiting professor in sociology at the Catholic University of America in D.C. since 2003. He also offers writing workshops in the area.
Dark Ages America is a fine book, but it was clearly hard to write and it is not fun stuff by any stretch. Why do you do it? What drives you?
Well, this is my sixth book. At one point two or three years ago, I made a rough calculation of all the hours I had spent writing the books I had published and the royalties I had earned. I then did some division and determined that since my first book in 1978, I had made roughly 2.5 cents an hour.
I often tell people that even if you are in the business to write a bestseller, which is a long shot and was never my intent anyway, writing is not a career you enter upon because it is lucrative.
Obviously, if I wanted to support myself a lot better, this was the wrong career to choose. I didn't write to produce a bestseller or turn a big profit. I wrote because these were important statements to me and represented problems I believe we need to try to solve.
Personally, I write to solve what I regard as crucial cultural questions, or dilemmas. When it is working, writing has a certain quality whereby the characters or ideas take over, and the energy starts to move you along, involuntarily, as it were. That is a sign that things are on track. It's larger than the writer, and pulls him or her along.
Writing becomes an adventure if you are open to exploration. In all six of my books, I rode the energy; I let it carry me rather than the reverse.
As far as I can make out, there are two categories of writers: Those who have something to say, and those who want to say something. I think the second category is largely worthless. But if the writing comes from your core, from a really deep place within you, it will carry you. You may not earn a cent, but again, that shouldn't be the point of it. The best book I ever wrote, Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality, sold something like 2,000 copies. I made virtually nothing from it in royalties—a few hundred dollars at most—and it took me ten years to write.
What kind of reaction have you received from readers and out on your book tour?
Well, I can tell you the most fun reaction, at least for me, was in a bookstore in Philadelphia. Apparently there was no listing in the local newspaper for the talk, but I was identified on the bookstore flyer as the Dean of Optometry at University of Southern California/Fullerton. Three people came, and one of them fell asleep (not that I really blame the guy). So I've taken to telling people that if they buy the book, I'll throw in a free eye exam. All of which goes to show that you can't take yourself too seriously.
But in San Francisco and New York there was a lot of advance publicity, and more than 100 people showed up at most of the talks. The reaction varies from city to city, but generally speaking, audiences have been pretty intense. Most of them wanted answers and they were appreciative of the fact that my book doesn't offer up easy solutions, such as meditating or logging onto an Internet grassroots website. There is no easy or even hard way out, really. We Americans have been raised on Emerson and Disney... we believe there is always an answer. But I think most of us are divorced from reality, and this is an important aspect of the fog in which we move. As Gore Vidal once wrote, "Americans never learn; it's part of our charm."
Dark Ages America is a record of our demise, and as such I don't expect it to sell much more than the 35,000 copies my previous book [ The Twilight of American Culture ] did.
Turning to nuts and bolts a bit, how do you work? How do you write?
I don't have writer's block too often, thank god. But I remember that on one occasion—with The Reenchantment of the World—I did get stuck and painted myself out of it. I was living in San Francisco. An artist friend gave me the keys to his loft. I got a canvas and some acrylics and 'solved' the problem on the canvas. In the case of Wandering God, the topic is so comprehensive, and the thesis so counterintuitive, that a few times I thought the whole thing had gone on the rocks. There were at least two occasions with it where I thought I'd lost the book entirely. So for days, I let it sit on my desk while I walked the streets, talking to myself—and finally I realized I could solve the problem by making the 'box' of the argument larger, i.e. enlarging the scope. In both cases I was able to save it, but I have to admit that it was a close shave, and actually kind of scary.
My biggest challenge is probably finding time to write in between making a living—I teach workshops in writing and editing. I can't do these and write at the same time; it is just too exhausting. But on days when I'm not teaching, I like to sit down at my desk around 8 in the morning and write until about 1 p.m. Then I feel like I am done for the day. After that I might go to the gym, see friends, go to a movie, or read fiction. I write about five pages a day that way. That would mean about 1,800 pages a year, which is obviously too long for a book. But obviously, much of the work is pure research. Generally, a chapter takes me about six months to research and write; sort of like going back to graduate school in each case.
How do you teach writing?
I've taught writing in two contexts. The first is in continuing education programs over several weeks. Say, every Thursday night 30 people for 2.5 hours for eight to twelve weeks. I really enjoy it because I can watch the material get better over time. We do a lot of exercises that are quite intimate and involve risks—and that's how you become a good writer.
The other way is a workshop for one or two days. Students have a variety of reasons for taking these, but I'm guessing that most of them are job related. In these, all I can really hope to do is give the students the confidence to launch into writing, to get the whole process started. I make it clear to them that I can't turn them into accomplished writers in a day or two, but maybe I can open the door just a crack.
I've been doing both for a long time and am quite happy with it. I know the mechanics and psychology of writing and love the fact that the majority of people who attend seem really interested and just soak it up.
With any writing, though, it comes down to this: If it is not happening for you, if the hair on the back of your neck isn't standing up when you sit down at your desk, then it probably isn't working. If you are bored, your readers will be, too. You know the old saw: No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. If the emotions and the intellect come together, you are probably on the right track.
Morris Berman's books are listed on Amazon.com. For in-depth discussions of Dark Ages America, please go to www.morrisberman.com.
By Michael Causey, WIW Board Member
As a lauded social critic and cultural historian, Morris Berman is an acute observer of humanity and specifically America and Americans in the 21st century. He does not like much of what he sees. In his new book, Dark Ages America (W.W. Norton), he offers a heartfelt and depressingly convincing portrait of a nation in a Roman-style decline and a people adrift. It was not a surprise, in fact, to learn from Berman that the working title for the book was "Colossus Adrift."
The book is brave in that it does not promise any easy solutions. Indeed, Berman argues, perhaps the best we can hope for in a post 9-11 America, where civil liberties are being shredded and the gap between the rich and poor widens each day, is to slow our national decline and to fashion the softest possible landing.
WIW spoke with Berman in May in the midst of a book tour that included vibrant, well-attended stops in cities including D.C., San Francisco, and New York, as well as a surreal event in a Philadelphia bookstore where the three people in attendance had come thinking the book was written by a noted ophthalmologist.
Berman has been visiting professor in sociology at the Catholic University of America in D.C. since 2003. He also offers writing workshops in the area.
Dark Ages America is a fine book, but it was clearly hard to write and it is not fun stuff by any stretch. Why do you do it? What drives you?
Well, this is my sixth book. At one point two or three years ago, I made a rough calculation of all the hours I had spent writing the books I had published and the royalties I had earned. I then did some division and determined that since my first book in 1978, I had made roughly 2.5 cents an hour.
I often tell people that even if you are in the business to write a bestseller, which is a long shot and was never my intent anyway, writing is not a career you enter upon because it is lucrative.
Obviously, if I wanted to support myself a lot better, this was the wrong career to choose. I didn't write to produce a bestseller or turn a big profit. I wrote because these were important statements to me and represented problems I believe we need to try to solve.
Personally, I write to solve what I regard as crucial cultural questions, or dilemmas. When it is working, writing has a certain quality whereby the characters or ideas take over, and the energy starts to move you along, involuntarily, as it were. That is a sign that things are on track. It's larger than the writer, and pulls him or her along.
Writing becomes an adventure if you are open to exploration. In all six of my books, I rode the energy; I let it carry me rather than the reverse.
As far as I can make out, there are two categories of writers: Those who have something to say, and those who want to say something. I think the second category is largely worthless. But if the writing comes from your core, from a really deep place within you, it will carry you. You may not earn a cent, but again, that shouldn't be the point of it. The best book I ever wrote, Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality, sold something like 2,000 copies. I made virtually nothing from it in royalties—a few hundred dollars at most—and it took me ten years to write.
What kind of reaction have you received from readers and out on your book tour?
Well, I can tell you the most fun reaction, at least for me, was in a bookstore in Philadelphia. Apparently there was no listing in the local newspaper for the talk, but I was identified on the bookstore flyer as the Dean of Optometry at University of Southern California/Fullerton. Three people came, and one of them fell asleep (not that I really blame the guy). So I've taken to telling people that if they buy the book, I'll throw in a free eye exam. All of which goes to show that you can't take yourself too seriously.
But in San Francisco and New York there was a lot of advance publicity, and more than 100 people showed up at most of the talks. The reaction varies from city to city, but generally speaking, audiences have been pretty intense. Most of them wanted answers and they were appreciative of the fact that my book doesn't offer up easy solutions, such as meditating or logging onto an Internet grassroots website. There is no easy or even hard way out, really. We Americans have been raised on Emerson and Disney... we believe there is always an answer. But I think most of us are divorced from reality, and this is an important aspect of the fog in which we move. As Gore Vidal once wrote, "Americans never learn; it's part of our charm."
Dark Ages America is a record of our demise, and as such I don't expect it to sell much more than the 35,000 copies my previous book [ The Twilight of American Culture ] did.
Turning to nuts and bolts a bit, how do you work? How do you write?
I don't have writer's block too often, thank god. But I remember that on one occasion—with The Reenchantment of the World—I did get stuck and painted myself out of it. I was living in San Francisco. An artist friend gave me the keys to his loft. I got a canvas and some acrylics and 'solved' the problem on the canvas. In the case of Wandering God, the topic is so comprehensive, and the thesis so counterintuitive, that a few times I thought the whole thing had gone on the rocks. There were at least two occasions with it where I thought I'd lost the book entirely. So for days, I let it sit on my desk while I walked the streets, talking to myself—and finally I realized I could solve the problem by making the 'box' of the argument larger, i.e. enlarging the scope. In both cases I was able to save it, but I have to admit that it was a close shave, and actually kind of scary.
My biggest challenge is probably finding time to write in between making a living—I teach workshops in writing and editing. I can't do these and write at the same time; it is just too exhausting. But on days when I'm not teaching, I like to sit down at my desk around 8 in the morning and write until about 1 p.m. Then I feel like I am done for the day. After that I might go to the gym, see friends, go to a movie, or read fiction. I write about five pages a day that way. That would mean about 1,800 pages a year, which is obviously too long for a book. But obviously, much of the work is pure research. Generally, a chapter takes me about six months to research and write; sort of like going back to graduate school in each case.
How do you teach writing?
I've taught writing in two contexts. The first is in continuing education programs over several weeks. Say, every Thursday night 30 people for 2.5 hours for eight to twelve weeks. I really enjoy it because I can watch the material get better over time. We do a lot of exercises that are quite intimate and involve risks—and that's how you become a good writer.
The other way is a workshop for one or two days. Students have a variety of reasons for taking these, but I'm guessing that most of them are job related. In these, all I can really hope to do is give the students the confidence to launch into writing, to get the whole process started. I make it clear to them that I can't turn them into accomplished writers in a day or two, but maybe I can open the door just a crack.
I've been doing both for a long time and am quite happy with it. I know the mechanics and psychology of writing and love the fact that the majority of people who attend seem really interested and just soak it up.
With any writing, though, it comes down to this: If it is not happening for you, if the hair on the back of your neck isn't standing up when you sit down at your desk, then it probably isn't working. If you are bored, your readers will be, too. You know the old saw: No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. If the emotions and the intellect come together, you are probably on the right track.
Morris Berman's books are listed on Amazon.com. For in-depth discussions of Dark Ages America, please go to www.morrisberman.com.
August 05, 2006
Interview on Media Matters with Bob McChesney
Morris Berman is this week's guest on Bob McChesney's Media Matters
by Live Streaming Program Begins at 11am Pacific Sunday Jul 30th, 2006 10:20 AM
Media Matters features host Bob McChesney in conversation with a variety of guests. Listeners may call with comments or questions.
Bob McChesney is a research professor in the Institute of Communications Research and the Graduate School of Information and Library Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“The media are central to all our lives,” he says. “Yet the media are the most frequently misunderstood parts of our lives. We want to help people understand the role of media in society.”
THIS WEEK'S GUEST ON ROBERT McCHESNEY'S MEDIA MATTERS
This week's guest is Morris Berman, the author most recently of "Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire."He has taught at a number of universities in Europe and North America,and has held visiting endowed chairs at Incarnate Word College (San Antonio), the University of New Mexico, and Weber State University. Between 1982 and 1988 he was the Lansdowne Professor in the History of Science at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Berman won theGovernor’s Writers Award for Washington State in 1990, and was the first recipient of the annual Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies in1992. He is the author of a trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness–The Reenchantment of the World (1981), Coming to Our Senses(1989), and Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality (2000)–and in 2000 his Twilight of American Culture was named a “Notable Book” by the New York Times Book Review. Dr. Berman has done numerous radio and television interviews in Europe, the United States, and Asia, and in recent years has lectured in Australia, Colombia, Germany, Mexico, and New Zealand. Since 2003 he has been a Visiting Professor in Sociology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
by Live Streaming Program Begins at 11am Pacific Sunday Jul 30th, 2006 10:20 AM
Media Matters features host Bob McChesney in conversation with a variety of guests. Listeners may call with comments or questions.
Bob McChesney is a research professor in the Institute of Communications Research and the Graduate School of Information and Library Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“The media are central to all our lives,” he says. “Yet the media are the most frequently misunderstood parts of our lives. We want to help people understand the role of media in society.”
THIS WEEK'S GUEST ON ROBERT McCHESNEY'S MEDIA MATTERS
This week's guest is Morris Berman, the author most recently of "Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire."He has taught at a number of universities in Europe and North America,and has held visiting endowed chairs at Incarnate Word College (San Antonio), the University of New Mexico, and Weber State University. Between 1982 and 1988 he was the Lansdowne Professor in the History of Science at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Berman won theGovernor’s Writers Award for Washington State in 1990, and was the first recipient of the annual Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies in1992. He is the author of a trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness–The Reenchantment of the World (1981), Coming to Our Senses(1989), and Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality (2000)–and in 2000 his Twilight of American Culture was named a “Notable Book” by the New York Times Book Review. Dr. Berman has done numerous radio and television interviews in Europe, the United States, and Asia, and in recent years has lectured in Australia, Colombia, Germany, Mexico, and New Zealand. Since 2003 he has been a Visiting Professor in Sociology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
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