Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
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- ISBN13: 9781568584379
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Pulitzer prize–winner Chris Hedges charts the dramatic and disturbing rise of a post-literate society that craves fantasy, seventh heaven and illusion.
Chris Hedges argues that we now live in two societies: One, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The additional, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of fake certainty and magic. In this “additional society,” serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins.
In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Hedges navigates this culture — attending WWF contests as well as Ivy League graduation ceremonies — exposing an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.
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has not arrived yet, ordered january 31st
supposed to arrive on march 9th.
still waiting.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I’ll keep this simple – for at least the first half of the book, Chris’s views on society are gloomy and he provides no glimpse of a solution or suggestions for the reader who relates to the issues. In additional words, yes Chris, I feel your pain but lets go to a solution (even simple solutions I can take for myself).. Will end the book but I’m not anticipating what I hope the book will add.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
Hedges lost all credibility — in my eyes, at least — when he cited statements by Vladimir Lenin as though the Bolshevik were a noted political philosopher, and not one of the most brutal dictators of the 20th Century who deliberately overran the will of the common people.
Otherwise, it’s worth noting that this books is deeply rooted in Marxist Critical Theory, with quotations from the likes of Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. But, Hedges seems unaware that many of the problems he describes as emblematic of capitalism’s failings are, in fact, Marxist in origin. As a result, Hodges’s book is confused, muddled and pathetic.
*Hedges laments the rise of obscurantism in American universities; yet he seems oblivious to the fact that Critical Theory and its offshoots have done the worst hurt — by far — to clear writing and logical analysis in American privileged education. (see Privileged Superstition: The Literary Left and Its Quarrels with Science; Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science; The Sokal Hoax: The Sham That Shook the College;Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault
*Hedges complains that much American pornography is brutal and degrading; yet he seems unaware that Critical Theorists like Marcuse and Max Horkheimer called for a breakdown of Christian sexual mores that had kept pornography a semi-underground phenomenon until the mid-20th Century. (see Marcuse’s “An Essay on Liberation” and “Eros and Civilization” or Horkheimer’s “Egotism and the Movement for Emancipation”)
These are but a few of the reasons Hedges fails to make his case. At least to me.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
This books is a gut-wrenching description of the rotten heart and corrupt soul of our Republic.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Mr. Hedges is clearly an educated observer whose insights deserve attention and reward study. But, he seems to have lost faith and agreed up; he has abandoned the battlefield. One must credit him for honesty, for after disparaging the Ivy League education as shallow and increasingly lacking value, he admits to springing for a $7,000 Princeton Review course for his own child–thereby admitting that he does not have the might to do for his own children what he advocates for his reader and highlighting the most telling aspect of his cautionary tale. We (language generally here) identify what is incorrect with our society but rather than engage in building it better we are content to merely follow, like sheep; frozen, we are unable to get off of the train that is speeding in the incorrect direction.
The leader’s loss of faith was evident in the hiding of the real answer until the bitter end of the book. The answer is tossed out at the end as if he was embarrassed to say it. Surely a name can just stand up and admit that society has abandoned religion at a staggering cost. We no longer preach the value of right neighborly like and concern–excepting on the battlefield, we no longer admire and reward bravery and sacrifice but as a replacement for look to our government to shoulder the load. As a replacement for of teaching our children to like one another and seek a perfectly just society we teach them to tolerate alternative mindsets even if offensive and indecent. Diversity becomes a goal in itself to the very destruction of the one truth that will save us all–which, reasonably independently of any flavor of religion, is simply to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Mr. Hedges finds his answer and makes a fine argument but fails to demonstrate the bravery necessary to name evil as such. In fact, much of his exposition was clearly designed to shock (this is NOT a book for children) and offend, a tactic that has merit but only if the shock is used to produce an equal but opposite result. He is not talking about “illusion” so much as he is talking about evil.
Yes, I know that the entire book is an exercise in naming evil–but it is couched in the cautious and politically-right jargon of our jaded age. Mr. Hedges assumes the position of the wry and knowledgeable spectator as a replacement for of taking the meadow and fighting for truth.
But, Mr. Hedges is to be commended for building the argument. My quibbles about how he chooses to do so are quibbles. He speaks a truth that needs to be heard–a society in search of illusion will lose the very meaning of reality. The wise and educated need to teach the simple and foolish the error of their ways or else history will yet again cycle through our wasted civilization as it has through others so many times over the course of time. I shall search out and read more of his work.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5