Continuing from my previous post, one of those old, bookmarked blogs I revisited after years of ignoring it is Morris Berman's blog Dark Ages America (named after his book of the same title). He is precisely what I meant by "up to his old tricks" after my having previously deplored his frat-boy humor and enhanced self-regard. The blog is basically Berman and his cohort of Wafers (named after another of Berman's books: Why America Failed, reviewed here) wagging their fingers and deriving weird satisfaction and enjoyment at stories exemplifying America's ongoing social, political, and economic collapse. I'm as human as the next and sometimes enjoy a quiet sense of Schadenfreude over some particularly stupid or inane self-inflicted wound, but I keep it to myself rather than broadcasting it out into the world. Pointing, gawking, and tut-tutting at others' stupidity and misfortune is not just in bad taste, it strikes me as dancing on the graves of those who suffer and die. Applies just as well to societies in the unenviable process of self-destructing (which accounts for a lot of countries hopelessly mired is late-stage capitalism).
Every ethical person constructs concentric circles of concern centered on immediate family and extending outward all the way to the globe. No one was take onto their shoulders responsibility for more than 8 billion people (or for that matter, animals in the wild or those farmed for food), so the outer bounds of that set of nested circles by default generates far less emotional involvement than the inner bounds. The middle ground is perhaps where one can still demonstrate some basic humanity by expressing empathy with those whose fates are much degraded over those of us using computers and smartphones to comment distastefully and at significant remove via blogs or Twitter or elsewhere. Student protest this past spring regarding Palestinian suffering at the hands of Israel, aided and abetted by the U.S. government in defiance of popular sentiment, is a case in point. It takes dehumanizing the victims to feel nothing in response to such wanton destruction, and one forfeits one's own humanity in the process. (For those who might still seek to shift blame onto the victims, the long-term lopsidedness of that conflict is both notorious and egregious.) In strange contrast, American TV viewers are deeply offended when a dog or cat is mistreated in the course of some fictional story.
Berman's most frequent and damning criticism of Americans is their utter, collective stupidity. I admit his assessment resonates with me. Indeed, there is a old Star Trek episode where apparently omnipotent aliens intervene in some dispute between factions to take away their power to wage war, forcing them instead to hammer out some sort of agreement (or merely walk away? I can't remember). If I were given the proverbial magic wand to enact my will, I would do something like that: remove violence (in its many manifestations) as a means of achieving an agenda. "No hitting, Timmy!" The additional insult delivered by the aliens, who take temporary humanoid form to communicate effectively with us apes, is disgust and repulsion at merely being in the presence of unevolved creatures (read: stupid Americans) -- another resonant idea. Berman styles himself as one of those superior beings, having foreseen the downfall of the U.S. in particular. He's a declinist for sure, and like the others, goes unheeded in his voluminous writings on the subject. It's ironic that Berman's preferred medium for warning against decline is books, which he knows few bother to read in an age of diminishing literacy and distraction from video. Yet here he is whinging at having figgered it out while being patently ignored (the Cassandra complex). Well, join the club, buddy! but don't be such a petty nuisance about it. Is there ever an instance of a declinist have been successful at steering a culture or society away from collapse? I can't think of one.
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