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Idiot America
Rating of the Book: 6 on a scale of 10 Review I read this book in November-December 2009. It is a well written book. You would be intuiting correctly if you suspected he was writing something about Americans being ignorant in some fashion. Keeping with the title, he likes to pepper his prose with appropriate big words, so have your dictionary handy as you can't be an "idiot" and understand his writing. You may already be getting the sense he has an "ax to grind". His basic premise is that we Americans are no longer interested in hearing from people who speak from a thinking or truth based perspective. He begins by talking about the American tradition of "cranks", people who used to be on the street corners crying out about some issue or another. I believe in the past they might have been referred to as prophets. They often did not fare well in the past. They were often a bit on the crazy or at least extreme side. As a person from a science background I am familiar with a variety of such people in science. I have been impressed that most are simply extremists, but some, though maligned initially, eventually make their points and become mainstream. The most famous one from my perspective would Velikovsky, with his book Worlds in Collision. When I was in college he was described as a kind of "nut case" who believed some huge comet hit the earth and killed the dinosaurs. In the early 70's scientists thought this was bunk. Now, it seems to be mainline dogma with a lot of evidence to back it up. According to Mr. Pierce we are people blown every which way by the winds of feeling based opinions. We are influenced by cranks, conspiracy theorists, the desire to hear hidden knowledge ( a sort of gnostic need to know the secret information that will set us free), and in general we are more influenced by the gut than by the mind. He believes there is a war on "expertise". He says, "If everyone is an expert, then no one is." He believes we are now being greatly influenced by what he describes as the three "Great Premises". These are a somewhat cynical yet, I believe, an accurate representation of our media based world, the premises go like this:
He believes the media uses these criteria to judge success, and my impression would be that he is correct. This sort of process takes us away from the pursuit of "truth" in some more absolute sense and moves us into the realm of emotional or feeling based truth. It is my impression that his entire book revolves around a deeper concept which he did not explain very well. He is getting at the concept that "feeling" is taking precedence over "thinking" in our valuing/decision making processes. From a depth psychological standpoint he is hi-lighting the split between thinking and feeling based decision making. He skirts all around this topic, but he seems unaware of this reality from Jungian theory. I was hoping he would get to a deeper discussion but he never does. Since he is not conversant in or aware of these aspects of the problem I found the book somewhat lacking and superficial in its endeavor to define the problem. I would like to have heard how to balance thinking and feeling based processes in our corporate life as individuals and in our country's politic. This is actually quite a herculean task. The book seems a little long for what he has to say. I liked the book, but I was glad to be done with it. I enjoyed thinking about it afterward and am finding it useful for discussions with people. He does like to rage against essentially any and all conservative perspectives. Most of the time I completely understand his points of view, but from my perspective it becomes a bit tiresome. Both conservatives and liberals get caught up in feeling based discussions. It sort of leaves the impression that only liberals really think about things. This seems to be quite a distortion. The problem in our media and culture is pervasive regardless of our orientations. We have become idiots in the liberal realm just as badly as the conservatives have become idiots. It's a reflection of who we are as a people. This is the problem we really have to deal with, how we act as a people and how we deal with the realms of our "shadow" as a culture. Do we have a spiritual perspective as a culture? We need his kind of voice, but ultimately we need much deeper looks inside than Mr. Pierce offered. C Climer All opinions are mine and only mine.
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