The Age of American Unreason [Hardcover]

How long should a new nation retain its "frontier" status? The United States used the condition of "filling an empty continent" to disclaim any need for intellectual advancement for over a century. During the following decades, learning may have become more widely disseminated and an "American culture" may have arisen to overturn that imported from Europe. Still, there remained the attitude that the "intellectual" was a figure of elitism.) While that picture is necessarily false - what other single nation has garnered so many Nobel awards? - "intellectuals" have not been held in high regard in the US. As Susan Jacoby reminds us, Richard Hofstadter's 1963 "Anti-intellectualism In American Life" was a breakthrough effort in pointing up how and why his countrymen viewed higher learning as they did. Jacoby has done more than merely updated Hofstadter in this excellent overview. She exposes some of the root conditions leading to her country spawning a tide of "unreason".

Distilling Jacoby's presentation to its basic element, we realise that the foundation for today's "Age of Unreason" lies in education. While that seems a paradox in a nation with so many noteworthy science, economic and other figures, the general picture confirms her analysis. It's not the education system itself that draws her ire - although she has some serious comments on that topic - but the diversionary elements either distracting the young from learning or failing to help preparing them for education. The former is something long commented on - the video screen. Whether it's games, "children's" programmes or simply "surfin' the 'Net", the video monitor leads children away from real mental challenges or sources of useful and meaningful information. Instead, children - and no few adults - are inundated with "infotainment". It boils down to "junk thought" being broadcast in one form or another and retained by those least able to resist it.

That manufactured term is almost self-explanatory in declaring why decline of the printed page is another of Jacoby's topics of concern. Reading, she argues, is falling by the wayside because images and sound-bites provide quick, simple explanations of what is deemed "reality". The brevity of presentation and the superficial forms used to convey it have led the young away from understanding the complexity of everyday issues. Jacoby lists the symptoms of the loss of reading, from shrunken book review sections in newspapers to her own experience as a journalist. Where once she was commissioned to produce lengthy, analytical pieces on a given topic, editors now put severe limits on word-count. Reading is being downplayed and readers are demanding and expecting to be less challenged and less informed about subjects. Brief, easily absorbed snippets - whether informative or not - have become the norm.

Nowhere, of course, is better placed to provide the "quick answer" than is religion. Jacoby's discussion of the role of fundamentalism [she eschews adding "Christianity" to the description] is extensive and thorough. Evangelical Christianity has experienced a rollercoaster ride through the years in the US. There have been, according to the author, three "Awakenings" of religious intensity in North America, the first prior to independence, the second in the early 19th Century and the third in the present day. Each has been typified by an aversion to a perceived dominance by an "intellectual elite". As Hofstadter had noted in his earlier book, the Awakenings have spilled over into a broader social arena than religion alone. Since religion is perceived as the very underpinnings of a stable society, any ideas or information challenging religion, established or evangelical, loss of religious intensity is viewed as tantamount to leading to social chaos. Stability, whether informed or not, is the aim. Only faith can provide consistency.

Although there are some missing elements in this book - why should religion gain such a foothold in one of the world's most literate and scientifically advanced nations, for example - this is a work deserving a wide readership. Jacoby doesn't make detailed comparisons between her native country and elsewhere, yet, she's concerned about what the decline in intellectual growth means for the future. Perhaps she considers that obvious, but the poorly informed readers she's concerned about might be better served by a nudge in that direction. Given the number of recent works on these questions, Jacoby is hardly alone in her analysis of the intellectual condition of the US. In terms of communicating the issues, her writing skills place her at a more accessible level than some of her colleagues. In any case, the issues are clear and her approach unequivocal. This book is, therefore, essential reading. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

"The Age of American Unreason" combines author Susan Jacoby's elegant historical analysis with ample references to modern American culture in making an excellent, often persuasive, case in explaining how and why American culture is literally at its nadir now. And yet, her fine book doesn't have the polemical logic and focus found in two other books published this year, Kenneth R. Miller's "Only A Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul", and Robert S. McElvaine's "Grand Theft Jesus". I strongly suspect that this may be due to the vast scope of Jacoby's book, which covers everything from the rise of scientific illiteracy and the advent of pseudoscientific nonsense like Intelligent Design and other flavors of creationism, to the political alliance between Fundamentalist Protestant Christian zealots and the conservative wing of the Republican Party. It may also be due, alas, to Jacoby's penchant for relying upon anecdotal memories of her youthful past in the 1960s, which, when compared and contrasted with her elegant historical analyses of American culture in the mid and late 19th Century, doesn't seem as persuasive.

Jacoby mourns the passing of a "middlebrow" culture which manifested itself in the forms of popular lectures on science attended by hundreds in the late 19th Century, to the publication of Will Durant's "The Story of Civilization", and the airing of classical music broadcasts by major radio and television networks. Instead, it has been replaced by a "lowbrow" culture noted for its corrosive effects on American culture. This includes not only the advent of rap music, but perhaps, more importantly, the de facto "segregation" of American studies into ethnic and gender studies which promote, not discourage, exclusion in American college and university classrooms. A "lowbrow" culture that has also embraced junk thought, ranging from, of course, the popularity of so-called "scientific" creationism, especially Intelligent Design, to those who have been advocating against mandatory immunization of children for measles. A "lowbrow" culture that is more widely disseminated than before, due to the rapid rise of the Internet, which Jacoby, not surprisingly, is quite critical of.

So, the reader may ask, what should be done to stem the rising tide of ignorance? In an all too brief closing chapter, Jacoby argues on behalf of "cultural conservation". Cultural conservation will succeed only if Americans turn away from a "culture of distraction" and embrace instead, concepts and facts that are firmly rooted in reality (For Jacoby one recent notable example of this is Judge John Jones' ruling at the conclusion of the 2005 Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District Trial, in which he noted explicitly how and why his decision critical of both the school district and Intelligent Design creationism was based upon expert testimony from scientists like Brown University cell biologist Kenneth R. Miller and University of California, Berkeley paleobiologist Kevin Padian, among others.). And yet, Jacoby notes, her plea for "cultural conservation" may be too late, simply because the United States has become so firmly entrenched in a "culture of distraction" that is noted more for its obsessive worship of celebrities than for trying to adhere at all to any semblance of rational thought. Jacoby's massive tome is bound to provoke liberals, as well as conservatives, for its dire analysis of the present state of American culture; whether it will be as persuasive as other, earlier works like Richard Hofstadter's "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life", remains to be seen.

The author has the ability to define the moment buy using historical references which I found fascinating.. I read Roosevelt's Fireside Chats as a result of one of her citations. I think that the dumming down of culture, the wave of anti-intellectualism, superficial thinking can apply to other countries as well: We have our Prime Minister in Italy who controls and owns the media and he was elected overwhelmingly by the people. (We too have a democracy.) Of course, in addition to our problems here we also have the Church which is pretty much against liberal thinking or change. The fact that Italians are individualistic, skeptical of government in general and have never thought of themselves as a united group complicates matters and makes a rational and progressive society all but impossible.