Are We There Yet? is a collection of essays grouped around three major themes: the collapse of the American empire; the question of individual identity; and some thoughts regarding the nature of a post-collapse world. The book analyzes what has gone wrong with the United States since its inception, and the problems we now face as a result. It discuss the elements of a healthy human identity--elements that are largely absent from the American scene. And it poses alternatives to all of this, models already present in the consciousness of a few, and which, post-collapse, may possibly be realized several decades down the line. In the course of this discussion, the author reviews the pathology of smart phones and related electronic gadgets; the phenomenon of Hillary Clinton as an archetypal American disaster, and of Joe Bageant as an unsung hero; and the visionary work of scholars such as Pitirim Sorokin and Lewis Mumford. All in all, Are We There Yet? will have you thinking about what the possibilities are for achieving some semblance of sanity in a world completely out of kilter. Readers interested in related titles from Morris Berman will also want to see: Coming to Our Senses (ISBN: 9781626542914), Spinning Straw Into Gold (ISBN: 9781635610536).
An emerging cult classic about America's cultural meltdown—and a surprising solution. A prophetic examination of Western decline, The Twilight of American Culture provides one of the most caustic and surprising portraits of American society to date. Whether examining the corruption at the heart of modern politics, the "Rambification" of popular entertainment, or the collapse of our school systems, Morris Berman suspects that there is little we can do as a society to arrest the onset of corporate Mass Mind culture. Citing writers as diverse as de Toqueville and DeLillo, he cogently argues that cultural preservation is a matter of individual conscience, and discusses how classical learning might triumph over political correctness with the rise of a "a new monastic individual"—a person who, much like the medieval monk, is willing to retreat from conventional society in order to preserve its literary and historical treasures. "Brilliantly observant, deeply thoughtful ....lucidly argued."—Christian Science Monitor
The Heart of the Matter Morris Berman wrote one of the best works of cultural history (the "Consciousness" trilogy) and one of the best works of political history (the "American Decline" trilogy) in recent decades. Since retiring, his output has been equally impressive: essays, memoirs, fiction, broad-gauged appraisals of Japanese and Italian culture. The stories in The Heart of the Matter, especially the title story, are astonishingly, even maniacally inventive. His imagination almost tires you out. --George Scialabba, author of The Modern Predicament, How To Be Depressed, and other works A group of would-be moon travelers takes a time machine back to Los Alamos in 1945, disrupts the Manhattan Project, and heads off the Cold War. A woman of 24, and a man of 85, copy Gandhi's practice of lying together naked without having sex. An archivist at the Met stumbles across a manuscript of Anaximenes, 6th century BC, which contains material that Plato apparently plagiarized. A 7-year-old boy gives his parents the slip and joins a traveling circus act, where he learns about love and magic. These are just a few of the delightfully fresh stories in Morris Berman's new collection of page-turners, which are at once funny, erotic, droll, and politically incorrect. Guaranteed to have you laughing out loud on cold winter nights. Morris Berman is the author of a number of books. His latest works, published by Echo Point Books, include Genio: The Story of Italian Genius; Coming to Our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West; Are We There Yet?--Essays and Reflections, 2010 to 2017; and Spinning Straw into Gold: Straight Talk for Troubled Times.
Spinning Straw Into Goldis exactly what its subtitle says: straight talk for troubled times. It offers no formula for success, as it is traditionally defined, and no promise that you can shape your destiny by the power of your mind. Goals such as these, in the view of the author, only reflect the spiritual emptiness of contemporary American life. What the book does offer is one man's meditation on the meaning of his life to date, and an opportunity for the reader to reflect on the meaning of his or her own life in turn. Success, i.e., living in reality, demands an awareness of the depth and complexity of that life: a coming to terms with it as it actually exists, with all its strange contradictions and surprising twists of fate. Spinning Straw Into Gold is thus not a feel-good book. Rather, it is a search-your-soul and ponder-your-being book. For those who have the courage to allow it to stimulate true reflection, it may be rewarding in unexpected ways. It is for those who seek richness in reality, rather than in the pipe dreams of mass society, that this book is written. Spinning Straw Into Gold contains six watercolor illustrations by Samala Coffey.
Spinning Straw Into Gold offers no formula for traditional success in life. What it does offer is one man's meditation on the meaning of his life and an opportunity for the reader to do the same through developing an awareness of what truly affects the quality of life, and a realistic coming-to-terms with those things which one can effect.
From the bestselling author of "The Twilight of American Culture" comes an explosive work that demonstrates that the country has entered an inescapable social, cultural, and economic "dark age.
Why America Failed shows how, from its birth as a nation of "hustlers" to its collapse as an empire, the tools of the country's expansion proved to be the instruments of its demise Why America Failed is the third and most engaging volume of Morris Berman's trilogy on the decline of the American empire. In The Twilight of American Culture, Berman examined the internal factors of that decline, showing that they were identical to those of Rome in its late-empire phase. In Dark Ages America, he explored the external factors—e.g., the fact that both empires were ultimately attacked from the outside—and the relationship between the events of 9/11 and the history of U.S. foreign policy. In his most ambitious work to date, Berman looks at the "why" of it all Probes America's commitment to economic liberalism and free enterprise stretching back to the late sixteenth century, and shows how this ideology, along with that of technological progress, rendered any alternative marginal to American history Maintains, more than anything else, that this one-sided vision of the country's purpose finally did our nation in Why America Failed is a controversial work, one that will shock, anger, and transform its readers. The book is a stimulating and provocative explanation of how we managed to wind up in our current situation: economically weak, politically passe, socially divided, and culturally adrift. It is a tour de force, a powerful conclusion to Berman's study of American imperial decline.
The Reenchantment of the World is a perceptive study of our scientific consciousness and a cogent and forceful challenge to its supremacy. Focusing on the rise of the mechanistic idea that we can know the natural world only by distancing ourselves from it, Berman shows how science acquired its controlling position in the consciousness of the West. He analyzes the holistic, animistic tradition--destroyed in the wake of Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--which viewed man as a participant in the cosmos, not as an isolated observer. Arguing that the holistic world view must be revived in some credible form before we destroy our society and our environment, he explores the possibilities for a consciousness appropriate to the modern era. Ecological rather than animistic, this new world view would be grounded in the real and intimate connection between man and nature.
Counting Blessings is an expression of gratitude for a life lived away from the madding crowd. This poetry collection was penned about a year after its author moved to a small town in Mexico. With the frenzy of American life receding into the background, the writer was able to sink into the stillness of his new surroundings, allowing long-dormant creative energies to surface. In addition to Counting Blessings, he also wrote a novel and a collection of essays questioning the values of American society, roughly during the same time.
In this short but captivating study, Morris Berman argues that the key to it is the Italian ability to inject "space," or movement, into static situations-whether in art, film, politics, or religion. In doing so, Italians were able to revolutionize their arenas of activity, and in so doing, the worlds in which they lived.
The third book in Morris Berman's much acclaimed trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness, Wandering God continues his earlier work which garnered such praise as "solid lessons in the history of ideas" (KIRKUS Reviews), "filled with piquant details" (Common Boundary), and "an informative synthesis and a remarkably friendly, good-natured jeremiad" (The Village Voice). Here, in a remarkable discussion of our hunter-gatherer ancestry and the "paradoxical" mode of perception that it involved, Berman shows how a sense of alertness, or secular/sacred immediacy, subsequently got buried by the rise of sedentary civilization, religion, and vertical power relationships. In an integrated tour de force, Wandering God explores the meaning of Paleolithic art, the origins of social inequality, the nature of cross-cultural child rearing, the relationship between women and agriculture, and the world view of present-day nomadic peoples, as well as the emergence of "paradoxical" consciousness in the philosophical writings of the twentieth century.
George Haskel, a retired professor of German literature, decides to found an institute to promote dullness, as a counterpoint to the hustling celebrity culture of contemporary America. The venture soon attracts a number of brilliant misfits, who transform the project into a political movement, the Authentic Party, that ultimately swells to 8 million members. Events begin to overtake George and his merry band, as luminaries such as Bill Maher, Woody Allen, and Jerry Brown get on board. The final showdown with the White House threatens a coup d'etat: Will America undertake a radical shift in the direction of authenticity, or will it remain committed to business as usual?
Neurotic Beauty is a remarkable reevaluation of Japan's role in the modern world. It includes a new assessment of the events leading up to the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, and of the potential role of Japanese philosophy in creating a dynamic approach to human nature and our understanding of reality. The book also shows the interrelatedness of various facets of Japanese history and society, including psychological orientation, pop culture, and Japan's vibrant craft tradition. Finally, it concludes with a possible prediction, that whereas the United States will not be able to escape from its neoliberal economic categories and its commitment to a self-defeating philosophy of "growth," Japan might surprise us, and turn out to be the frontrunner in the development of post-capitalist alternatives in the 21stcentury. Written in a personal and accessible style, the book is likely to provide a focus for debate about issues of economy, ecology, and sustainability for years to come.
In 1918 Lytton Strachey published Eminent Victorians, which was a take-down of popular Victorian heroes. In reality, he argued, these paragons of virtue had feet of clay, a dark side that had been conveniently overlooked. The book was an enormous hit, for in speaking to his generation, he was preaching to the converted: even beyond the influential Bloomsbury Circle, of which he was a leading light, there was a widespread revulsion against the hypocrisy, the stilted formalism, and the emotional repression of the Victorian era. In the following study, Morris Berman aims to do the reverse, i.e., discuss the greatness of a number of those Englishmen and women who lived and worked in the first half of the twentieth century: their dedication, integrity, sincerity, and above all, their sheer brilliance. Much has been made of the galaxy of talent that made up the Italian Renaissance, or the French Enlightenment. Perhaps less has been said about the English galaxy of the post-Victorian era, whose legacy was to contribute significantly to making the modern age even more modern; more daring and experimental, one might say. "There were giants in the earth in those days," is how Berman feels about these folks. It could reasonably be argued that we live today in the world they created. Editorial Reviews: "For those of us who have had the pleasure of becoming familiar with the writings of Morris Berman, we can see a robust theme that runs through much of his work. He challenges his readers to make a distinction between living a scripted life and one that is spontaneous and authentic. In this new book, which is a veritable masterpiece, Berman continues with this theme. In a series of vignettes on early 20th-century British novelists, poets, philosophers, and intellectuals, Berman deftly highlights their work, lives, and personal struggles through a colorful lens. Eminent Post-Victorians: Portraits of Genius is a joy to read and an inspiration for anyone searching for genuine meaning, love, spirituality, or any of the other things that make life tolerable." - Joel Magnuson, author of The Dharma and the Economy and Financing the Apocalypse, among other works "Morris Berman never fails to surprise. Having written a thoughtful dirge (the celebrated American Trilogy) on the decline of the American empire, he has now produced a wistful appreciation of the culture of the British Empire in its twilight. Engaging brief portraits of Forster, Woolf, Eliot, Auden, and half a dozen others make ideal introductions, and an idiosyncratic Epilogue strikes a personal but affecting note. Like everything of Berman's, this is not merely worth reading, it is essential reading." - George Scialabba is the author of five essay collections and How To Be Depressed. His Selected Essays will be published by Verso in 2023. About the Author: Morris Berman is a poet, novelist, essayist, social critic, and cultural historian. He has written seventeen books and nearly 200 articles, and has taught at a number of universities in Europe, North and South America, and Mexico. He won the Governor's Writers Award for Washington State in 1990, and was the first recipient of the annual Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies in 1992. In 2000, The Twilight of American Culture was named a "Notable Book" by the New York Times Book Review, and in 2013 he received the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity from the Media Ecology Association. Dr. Berman lives in Mexico.
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