Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

Christ Hedges book EMPIRE OF ILLUSION: THE END OF LITERACY AND THE TRIUMPH OF SPECTACLE is a depresing book that is a harsh dose of reality. Hedges diagnosed the sad fact that too many Americans are living in a world of illusion rather than reality. Hedges was blunt in his assessement that gratutious violence, indifference to good and evil, and honor to whatever is destructive and is the cultural mileux that infects the minds of so many people. Such mindless and thoughtless images hold sway while intelligence, reason, and knowledge have been marginalized to the point of almost criminality.Hedges opening sections of this book dealt the facade of professional "wrestling." Hedges cited numerous anecdotes of professional wrestlers using the matches as show cases for insult, false condemnation of opponents, and mechanisms for hate mongering. The spectalces include false testimony of the participants lying about opponents' lives, insulting each others' wives/family menbers, and bombastic nonsense about their alleged prowess. The sad part is that attendees and viewers take such phony displays seriously. The viewers and attendees belive that the staged bouts and the outragous comments are actual reality rather than fantasy. Hedges dd not object to the professional wrestling, but he condemned the attendees and viewers for their belief in such chrades. The promoters were condemned for pandering to such illusions and false spectacles.Hedges had no kind words for false celebrity status and the false impression that such status made on too many people. He condemned the attraction of celbrity gossip, New Age Nonsense, and psycho-babble. The lurid details of who is commiting adultry with whom, the alleged drama of celebrities, abuse alcohol and drugs, plus the attire of celebrities are game for Hedges scathing denounciation. Added to such shallowness is the concern of plastic surgery, diet fetishes, and cosmetics. Hedges demonstrated that false illusions with trivial concerns replace reality. In other words, illusions have conquered reality. As Hedges noticed, anyone who exposes the unimportance of all this is branded as a heretic and marginalized.The chapter on the illusion of love is tragic and depressing. Hedges clearly condemned that bona fide love and affection have been replaced by pornography and violent sex. The obscene, violent episodes of sexual activity have been marketed and is highly profitable to the producers. The physcial and emotional abuse the women suffer is hard to digest to people with any sense of compassion of which there are too few. Prof. Neil Postman wrote a book titled AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH (1985)which dealt with the illusion that physical sexual abouse and humiliation have been accepted as the norm. The producers of porn pander to racism via black and Hispanic people. Some of the torture at Abu Ghraib has been publisized to the dismay of other honroable service men and woman. Yet as Hedges noted, such images attract favorable lurid attention. The women involved suffer physical pain, and no one seems to care as these women are disposable.Another illusion that Heges is the illusion of wisdom. He referred to "intellectual elites." These "elites" do not know and do not want to know the hardships of blue collar workers. University teachers disdain honest intellectual inquiry and cater to such fads as AP classes, standarized tests, frills, etc. The teachers at elite colleges/ universities cater to political forms, political correctness, and avoidence of "The Great Books." In fact, the colleges teachers at elite schools avoid The Great Books and serious thought, especially of good vs. evil, at all costs to protect their jobs. Any inquiry of corporate greed and destructive power is destructive to anyone who would dare to make an honest inquiry. Students at eltie schools are inebriated with acquring power and using greed which are destrutrive to bona fide learning.What has been the result of such intellectual perversion? Hedges mentioned a few such as students spying on their teachers and each other. Corportate government funding is behind the attack on intellectual honesty and knowledged. The corporate funding has been so exclusive that the California Univesity at Berckly has buildings where most students may not enter. Hedges had harsh words for college athletics. College sports figures live at a much higher stand of living than 99% of the students. Yet, after their tuition and comfortable living conditions are paid by boosters and taxpayers, the sports' fanatics insist the sports figures get paid. The undersigned's view is that if these sprots figures are not happy with the luxery they already have, they can quit sports. What is so disgraceful is that college football coaches are the highest paid emplyees on college campuses.Furthermore, Hedges condemned what is taught to college students is "moral squalor." Great Books which deal with ultimate questions are either falsified or consigned to "the Orwellian Memory Hole." A careful examination of history is shunned because of the possibility that such books such as Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS might cause students to make a comparison of the current American imperialsim which so physically destructive to our "enemies," whomever that may at any given moment, and the financial problems that these tar baby wars cause in the US. The attitude is that NO ONE should learn from history.Regarding teaching and learning, elite private schools get tax paid subsidies while public schools get drastic budget cuts. The "elite" schools inculcate privledge and stupidity over actual knowledge. On page 101, Hedges wrote an amusing anecdote re blue collare workers who have so many skills re the building trades. Hedges commented that he was teased about his constant reading and is lack of skill using tools. The blue collar workers are scorned by the "elites" and are on their own re their economic status. As an aside, the undersigned remembers a 1960s slogan that, "A society that does not honore its plumbers as much as its philosophers and does not honor its philosophers as much as its plumbers will have neither pipes nor ideas that will hold water." Hedges noted that too many elite snobs do not realize how important blue collar workers are to our comfortable living. To paraphrase William Hazlitt (1778-1830), a society that is at war and constant work is akin to an insect colony.The chapter on "happiness" was a serious blow to those who fall for psycho-babble. Corporate executives and their employees attend long winded conferences re "positive psychology" which shields the attendees from reality.Hedges probed this useless nonsense by showing that such psycho-babble demands comformity, and anyone who exposes serious problems and does not conform is supposedly attacking happiness. Hedges should have made use of the novel titled BRAVE NEW WORLD. The mindset of psycho-babble is that if tragedy occurs, the traedgy is the fault of the victims. Many employees followed this nonsense until they lost their jobs. Hedges excoriates the psycho-babble of "flow." As Hedges wrote, the psycho-babble of "flow" is simply self delusion.The final section of Hedges book is titled "The Illusion of America." The alleged "free market" has caused the financial system to falter. The solution of the "elties" is to fleece American taxpayers. The polticos claim that financial hardship is good for the country when these elites loot the taxpayers for their own greed. Americans are so influenced by illusions that they do not know what has been lost. Hedges made a good case that "The Culture of Death" is now the accepted norm, and there is no history of Americans when most of them had self respect. Any mention of this is kept from the reading public. For example Hedges cited the fact that THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS refused Prof. Wolin's work because of his criticsm of crumbling empire and financial fraud.Hedges concluded the book by comparing Sparta with Athens. The Spartans praised militarism, severe discipline, obedience, and power. The Athenians contributed lasting achievements re science, philosophy, literature, etc. While Hedges wrote about hope, this writer does not accept hope. The false, calloused, violent illusions are too imbreded for any significant change-except for the worse.James E. EgolfJuly 25, 2012

Provocative and compelling. This book did not disappoint me. It is similar in theme and structure to Susan Faludi's work, "Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man", that was written in 2000, but whereas S. Faludi's was ambitious and wide-ranging in scope - she interviewed everyone from LA street gang members to former astronauts - to illustrate again and again how American corporate/consumer culture has emasculated men and left them feeling devalued and powerless - Hedges limits his scope to only five venues: professional wrestling, the LA porn industry (where 90% of the films are made), universities, and "Positive Psychology". The fifth chapter is devoted to how American democracy and culture as a whole has become a fading shadow of its former self. Interestingly, Faludi and Hedges write about the porn industry as a metaphor for the dehumanization of mass consumer culture.Interestingly, both Faludi and Hedges write about the porn industry as a metaphor for the dehumanization that American culture has wrought. Whereas Faludi focused on the male performers ("Waiting for Wood"), Hedges treats us to a shocking and appalling glimpse at what the women performers have to go through while making these films. This section is not for the squeamish.Hedges work is not about the marginalization of men, but the marginalization of our entire communities by the corporate culture. This book makes clear that , most of the hot topics of the day - universal health-care, abortion rights, gun rights, school choice, school-prayer, "Creationism", Affirmative Action, Medical Marijuana - the list goes on - are nothing but side-shows whose main effect is to distract us from the slow-motion coup-detat taking place in under our very noses as we tacitly concede more and more of our autonomy to corporations. For example, Hedges made clear that in the recent debate in Congress over Obama's Health Care Act, the only thing that ever really mattered to those who had the power to influence the law was how big a share of the spoils would fall to corporations. The result is a very ugly sausage - we are left with a law that will soon require all of us to buy their defective product. Real reform - the single-payer option - was never on the table despite any lip-service that may have been thrown out as a decoy.This book has nothing but scathing criticism for the Obama administration for the way that Obama has caved in to corporate interests at every opportunity starting with the financial-industry bail-outs and the Health Reform Act, which reforms nothing. According to Hedges, Obama has done everything to follow in his predecessors footsteps to expand presidential power and weaken civil liberties and fundamental rights such as habeus corpus.This book paints a bleak picture of what our fates will be when the system collapses and most of us find that the food that has been grown, processed, packaged and transported to us from hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away can no longer be delivered. This will no longer be about our precious feelings of self-worth, it will be about our survival. Mr. Hedges sees our roles changing from enfranchised citizens to corporate serfs.Regrettably, this book does not provide a clear call-to-action to reverse the steady erosion of our democracy and way of life. In one of the chapters, Mr. Hedges claims that early 20th Century communists, despite their faults, "had it right" in that they were one of the first to see through the facade and recognize the true nature of corporate capitalism. Too bad they didn't seem to notice the true nature of their own brand of totalitarianism before it ruined and destroyed tens of millions of lives around the world under various flags and slogans. I hope he's not expecting us go go down that route. We've already seen glimpses of what American totalitarianism will look like: Prohibition, Welfare, War on Drugs, Affirmative Action, the Patriot Act, "anti-hate" thought-crimes. If you want to have a better understanding of this dangerous trend in our political history, read Jonah Goldberg's insightful work, Liberal Fascism. Mr. Hedges does offer an antidote of sorts at the very end of his book. He says that love will save us. I think we're going to need more than that.What Mr. Hedges doesn't say is that corporations, for all their ruthlessness and amorality, are the only system that has ever delivered the goods to so many. Is there another system that could replace corporations that might achieve the same kind of capital formation that makes an i-phone or an Airbus, let alone the vast communication networks that these things rely upon, possible? Does Mr. Hedges believe we would be better off with Central Planning Committee with a five-year-plan? I think the answer is not to get rid of corporations, but to cut them back down to size and put them in their proper place.I'm not a historian, but I think I read somewhere that corporations, or "corporate charters", used to be granted by monarchs to groups of investors to perform public works for the crown that were too big and risky for individuals to accomplish, such as exploring new sea routes and forming new colonies. There was always the understanding that these new entities were to operate for the common good and existed at the pleasure of the monarch, who could cancel their charter and disband them at will. Of course, these new entities took on a life of their own. Their final emancipation came when some enterprising Washington lawyers figured out how to apply the Fourteenth Amendment to chartered businesses, giving them the legal rights of individuals, and far more power and influence than the recently liberated slaves for whose protection the 14th Amendment had been drafted. In a nutshell, I believe that's how we got to where we are today. Mr. Hedges hammers home that the our elected officials have become the new courtiers of their corporate masters, and We the People are their willing serfs, kept passive with a constant drivel of cheap drama and gaudy spectacle.I also suspect that the problem and the solution may not be with corporations, but with us. We all have the power any time we want to get rid of our TV sets (or at least cancel our cable subscription), nourish ourselves from food sold at the local farmer's markets, and shun big chain stores like Gap, Target and Walmart for local businesses and thrift stores (I have, and I'm better dressed than I was before!). Of course this will do nothing to curtail the huge defense industry because we can't shop by ourselves for aircraft carriers and army divisions, but I think that it is a way to reclaim our own lives back bit by bit. For me, that seems like a good place to get started while we prepare ourselves for the much bigger struggle that may lie ahead to reclaim our autonomy as free people.

Paperback arrived in excellent condition. Paperback is in a larger size than usual with larger print so easy reading.

I'm afraid America has real problems if this book is accurate in its portrayal. And I do believe it is. Work to do to put things right.

著名なジャーナリストによる現代アメリカ弾劾の書。元は牧師志望で神学校出身、何故かボクサー経験もあるベテラン戦場特派員の著者。名演説家で文章家としても定評がある。処女作の『War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning』で早々に注目された。アメリカ社会の現実感の喪失をテーマにしている。末端カルチャー（プロレス、ポルノ業界）の現場ルポから始まり、企業による大学教育支配、ポジティブシンキング業界の人心操作指南の不気味、パワーエリートに仕える宦官と化した一般メディア…アメリカの幻想装置をツアーして周りながら、国柄の崩壊とリベラルの敗北、そして民主主義の機能麻痺の惨状を怒りのペンで綴っている。フェイスブックで自己顕示し、「アメリカンアイドル」に夢中になり、リアリティTVに感情移入し、娯楽スペクタクルの乱舞の中に生きる人々の中に社会に対する不足感があるかは疑問だ。しかしそれこそが新手の全体主義だと著者が言う。娯楽だけは豊富に提供してくれるファシズム。かつてハックスリーが予言した通りのthe brave new worldが到来した。世の中、ナルシシズムをくすぐる言辞で溢れているが、その実、人間の商品価値は大幅に下がった。値付けしてんのは「市場」であるから。資本主義と民主主義は別にセットではない。中国を見ればいい。さらに根本的にところでは、民主主義が真実宣伝通りに効果的であるなら、エリートが最初にそれを許すはずがないのではないか、ということだが。現実感の喪失という点は、基本的に農林水産業系の世界から離れれば離れるほど、人間は生存のリアリティから遠くなるはではないか。それは別にアメリカに限らず。私もまた自分がそのようなリアリティから遠いと感じる。誰もがいつかは死という現実に出会うのだし、かりそめのテーマパークに住む人々は放っておけばいいんじゃないの、などとも思うが、著者さんは牧師体質なのである。演壇から熱弁をふるう名説教師をイメージして欲しい。そして著者さんは、この世が現実よりももう少し高貴であることを望んでいる。だからこのように嘆きの人になる。出口のない嘆きだろうが、著者と共に嘆けない人はヒトとして不幸かもしれない。

Avoid if you react badly to reality. Hedges does not mince words. All Americans should not read unless they have a real shot at changing the entire U.S. government structure, U.S. media imdustry and world public opinion. Otherwise you may get depressed - sorry, you probably already are according to this book.

A superb and unbiased view of whats really been shaping America for the last 40+ years. Honest, evidential, factual, harrowing, saddening, empowering, emotional and revealing. I rarely feel changed by a book, but I can say that about this one. Will we really be able to change the world and arrest the damage already inflicted over so many decades? I hope so.