juryjone
22nd May 2008, 04:01 PM
An interesting concept for a book – 300+ pages describing why the book will not be read by the American public at large.
Susan Jacoby tries to delve into most of the reasons why Americans, led by President Bush, repudiate knowledge and state their pride of their ignorance. There are so many reasons covered, however, that the book is not as focused as I would have liked.
Jacoby starts by stating that the current mindset is not just one of anti-intellectualism (although that is certainly present) but of anti-rationalism. She traces the history of anti-intellectualism, where people of great learning are denigrated as “elites”, from the colonies through the present. She shows how intellectuals on the Left were branded as anti-American during the McCarthy hearings, and how, during the uproar of the late Sixties, intellectuals on the Right began distancing themselves from the very name of intellectual and therefore conflated “intellectual elite” and “liberal” as things to be shunned. She also shows how the rise of fundamentalist religion, as it has on several occasions in our nation’s history, has led to anti-rationalism, where unquestioning faith has been valued above reasoned discourse.
In one telling chapter, she describes how Robert Kennedy, on the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, extemporaneously gave a speech lamenting the divisiveness of American society, including a quote from Aeschylus. She describes how FDR, on the occasion of his first Fireside chat, asked Americans to pull out maps of the Pacific so that he could explain to them in detail why the US was failing in the early battles of the war. She then contrasts them to our current president, whose most telling quote is "I'm the decider."
Although she voices her scorn for the Right in no uncertain terms, the book shows that the rise of unreason is not all one-sided. Her chapter on junk though in the present day is full of examples of how the Left has aided in dumbing down curriculum and promoting junk science. At this point I would have welcomed a lengthier discussion of how to recognize a well-designed experiment – she touches on sample size as an indicator but mentions nothing else (such as proper controls) explicitly.
She also goes into the decline of print as a major reason for the lowering standards we, as a nation, set for ourselves. She also lays the blame on technological advances, such as television, the Internet, and even the iPod. She is no Luddite, however – she concedes the rewards that are inherent from visual media, but states the truth that these media are great for presenting individual facts quickly but woefully inadequate for presenting the full context necessary to use these facts in decision making.
Jacoby also laments the decline in conversation brought about by television, texting, e-mailing and blogs. Although the book is unfocused at times, I recommend The Age of American Unreason for aiming to stimulate conversation and perhaps starting a dialogue to help stem the decline in American thinking.
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Susan Jacoby tries to delve into most of the reasons why Americans, led by President Bush, repudiate knowledge and state their pride of their ignorance. There are so many reasons covered, however, that the book is not as focused as I would have liked.
Jacoby starts by stating that the current mindset is not just one of anti-intellectualism (although that is certainly present) but of anti-rationalism. She traces the history of anti-intellectualism, where people of great learning are denigrated as “elites”, from the colonies through the present. She shows how intellectuals on the Left were branded as anti-American during the McCarthy hearings, and how, during the uproar of the late Sixties, intellectuals on the Right began distancing themselves from the very name of intellectual and therefore conflated “intellectual elite” and “liberal” as things to be shunned. She also shows how the rise of fundamentalist religion, as it has on several occasions in our nation’s history, has led to anti-rationalism, where unquestioning faith has been valued above reasoned discourse.
In one telling chapter, she describes how Robert Kennedy, on the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, extemporaneously gave a speech lamenting the divisiveness of American society, including a quote from Aeschylus. She describes how FDR, on the occasion of his first Fireside chat, asked Americans to pull out maps of the Pacific so that he could explain to them in detail why the US was failing in the early battles of the war. She then contrasts them to our current president, whose most telling quote is "I'm the decider."
Although she voices her scorn for the Right in no uncertain terms, the book shows that the rise of unreason is not all one-sided. Her chapter on junk though in the present day is full of examples of how the Left has aided in dumbing down curriculum and promoting junk science. At this point I would have welcomed a lengthier discussion of how to recognize a well-designed experiment – she touches on sample size as an indicator but mentions nothing else (such as proper controls) explicitly.
She also goes into the decline of print as a major reason for the lowering standards we, as a nation, set for ourselves. She also lays the blame on technological advances, such as television, the Internet, and even the iPod. She is no Luddite, however – she concedes the rewards that are inherent from visual media, but states the truth that these media are great for presenting individual facts quickly but woefully inadequate for presenting the full context necessary to use these facts in decision making.
Jacoby also laments the decline in conversation brought about by television, texting, e-mailing and blogs. Although the book is unfocused at times, I recommend The Age of American Unreason for aiming to stimulate conversation and perhaps starting a dialogue to help stem the decline in American thinking.
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