Another book on the decline of american, and by extension western, society. What is different about Packer's approach is he does it through stories - not fiction, but the stories of real people's lives, gathered through hundreds of hours of interviewing. The book is organized by decades, with each chapter starting with a collection of what looks like newspaper extracts highlighting some of the decade's key events and stories. He tells the stories of some important figures like the founder of Walmart. Three key characters, humble everyday people, he follows through several of the decades and we see how their life develops and changes shape against the backdrop of a changing society.
To be honest, I didn't read the whole book, but not because it wasn't worth reading. I think it is a very humanized way to look at some of the current issues we face as societies, rather than seeing the issues as statistics and and argument of ideas. No, I didn't read the whole thing because I'm starting to feel like I've read enough about what is going on, what is happening, how things are falling apart. My interests are shifting to questions like what to do about it, where did it come from, what are the deep forces behind this, what can we learn to help us move on.
Sunday 27 October 2013
The Big Disconnect - Giles Slade 2012
Slade sums up the focus of the book in the Introduction: "What you will read in the coming pages is a description of how we progressively sacrificed the quality of human life for our economic well-being. If, currently, your best friend is your iPhone or iPad, after reading this book you will understand why that is so, and also you will finally understand the real cost of numbing the pangs of human loneliness with human-mehanical neo-friendships."
In the course of the book, Slade traces the development of this condition of substituting technology for real human activity and interaction. To my surprise, he traces it back to the introduction of the radio. And already at that time, you see the clever marketing trick of audience ratiocination - the cosy image of the family huddled together around the radio apparently only lasted 3 or 4 years. Radio manufacturers quickly saw their sales taper off as most families soon had a radio. What to do? Create target audience specific programming, encourage tribal identities, so everyone in the family soon needs their own radio so they can confirm their new identity by listening to the shows targeted at them. Brilliant marketing... not so brilliant social phenomenon, according to Slade.
Here is another quote he includes in the book from William Deresiewicz: "We have given our hearts to machines, and now we are turning into machines." Faux Friendships, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 2012 This is another interesting point, and I see it connect to that other elusive subject I am interested in - the essence or zeitgeist of the corporate structure/mindset/organizing principle. You can see this trend from early on in the mass production revolution - humans become extensions or servicers of the machine. Corporate hiring practices now are like this too. Instead of submitting a carefully thought out, creative resume, you go through their on-line process, responding to a set collection of questions in categories. The questions and categories are determined by the software, the algorithm, the computer process they use for screening applications. You, the prospective employee, are no longer yourself, you are an extension of the machine. Efficient, yes, but also completely dehumanizing. This is maybe one of the key points of the corporate Way - everything is reduced to a cog of the larger machine, a process dictated by efficiency, profit (for a few), and technology. This has been said before, and has been true for a while now, but this corporate ethos is invading more and more areas of our life. (Which is what Rukhoff talks about in this book, Life Inc.)
Another point Slade brings up is the origin of a materialistic society in the U.S. He place that origin right at the end of the second world war. Social leaders were worried about the returning soldiers willingness to return to the narrow confines of the poor worker's life after experiencing their strength during the war, and making so many sacrifices in defence of "free" society. The strategy that was hit upon was to increase availability of material goods and create the possibility of acquiring ever more bigger and better material goods. (This increase in availability is also tied to the mass-production corporate structure itself.) This is an interesting point worth exploring further.
Yet another area of interest is his discussion of trust in modern society. In smaller, agrarian society trust is based on directly knowing people. In large urban, industrial societies, you don't really know anyone -society is anonymous and distanced. The need for trust was then extended to the "expert" and we see a growth in the importance and role of experts. Unfortunately, these days even this trust in experts is waning, as it becomes more and more obvious that the main concern of experts is to protect their position and interests (or the interests of who is paying them).
An important book - a few sections are a bit of a slog, but well worth reading. I wish he had included a bibliography.
In the course of the book, Slade traces the development of this condition of substituting technology for real human activity and interaction. To my surprise, he traces it back to the introduction of the radio. And already at that time, you see the clever marketing trick of audience ratiocination - the cosy image of the family huddled together around the radio apparently only lasted 3 or 4 years. Radio manufacturers quickly saw their sales taper off as most families soon had a radio. What to do? Create target audience specific programming, encourage tribal identities, so everyone in the family soon needs their own radio so they can confirm their new identity by listening to the shows targeted at them. Brilliant marketing... not so brilliant social phenomenon, according to Slade.
Here is another quote he includes in the book from William Deresiewicz: "We have given our hearts to machines, and now we are turning into machines." Faux Friendships, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 2012 This is another interesting point, and I see it connect to that other elusive subject I am interested in - the essence or zeitgeist of the corporate structure/mindset/organizing principle. You can see this trend from early on in the mass production revolution - humans become extensions or servicers of the machine. Corporate hiring practices now are like this too. Instead of submitting a carefully thought out, creative resume, you go through their on-line process, responding to a set collection of questions in categories. The questions and categories are determined by the software, the algorithm, the computer process they use for screening applications. You, the prospective employee, are no longer yourself, you are an extension of the machine. Efficient, yes, but also completely dehumanizing. This is maybe one of the key points of the corporate Way - everything is reduced to a cog of the larger machine, a process dictated by efficiency, profit (for a few), and technology. This has been said before, and has been true for a while now, but this corporate ethos is invading more and more areas of our life. (Which is what Rukhoff talks about in this book, Life Inc.)
Another point Slade brings up is the origin of a materialistic society in the U.S. He place that origin right at the end of the second world war. Social leaders were worried about the returning soldiers willingness to return to the narrow confines of the poor worker's life after experiencing their strength during the war, and making so many sacrifices in defence of "free" society. The strategy that was hit upon was to increase availability of material goods and create the possibility of acquiring ever more bigger and better material goods. (This increase in availability is also tied to the mass-production corporate structure itself.) This is an interesting point worth exploring further.
Yet another area of interest is his discussion of trust in modern society. In smaller, agrarian society trust is based on directly knowing people. In large urban, industrial societies, you don't really know anyone -society is anonymous and distanced. The need for trust was then extended to the "expert" and we see a growth in the importance and role of experts. Unfortunately, these days even this trust in experts is waning, as it becomes more and more obvious that the main concern of experts is to protect their position and interests (or the interests of who is paying them).
An important book - a few sections are a bit of a slog, but well worth reading. I wish he had included a bibliography.
The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty - Nina Munk
A brilliant take-down of the modern concept of expert. The book portrays all the failings of our current expert-worship culture, and why, with their advice, we just keep digging ourselves deeper and deeper. A list: huge egotism, self-interest, dismissal of experience and ideas of the people actually living the situation, reliance on large amounts of money to accomplish goals, top-down flow of ideas and structures, insulation from the effects of their recommendations and ideas, refusal to take responsibility when things go wrong (just change focus), claim success but blame failure on externals and the stupidity of others, culture-centrism, class-centrism, narrow focus of viewpoint.
I just keep coming back to the image of Sachs sitting in his 8 million dollar condo built for him by one of the Ivy League universities as he pontificates about the situation of dirt-poor africans living in mud huts... Makes me fee queasy (and a bit hysterical...)
Well-written. Interesting read. Funny in a black humour (unintended) kind of way.
Refer back in particular to the comments on Nial Ferguson and his book, The Great Degeneration.
I just keep coming back to the image of Sachs sitting in his 8 million dollar condo built for him by one of the Ivy League universities as he pontificates about the situation of dirt-poor africans living in mud huts... Makes me fee queasy (and a bit hysterical...)
Well-written. Interesting read. Funny in a black humour (unintended) kind of way.
Refer back in particular to the comments on Nial Ferguson and his book, The Great Degeneration.
Arab Society and Culture - Samir and Roseanne Saad Khalaf ed. (TPL)
An interesting collection of short pieces on various aspects of Turkish and Arabic contemporary culture, some academic, some essay style and even some fiction extracts. To find again when I have the time and focus.
Friday 11 October 2013
The Brain Dead Megaphone - George Saunders 2007
A collection of essay/stories.
The title piece is a wonderfully sarcastic blow up of modern american media. Bitingly hilarious. The other pieces range over many ideas, but many of them share the same theme of laughing at/criticizing modern media in some way. There is even an essay on Huck Finn.
Saunders has other moods besides sarcasm. The Great Divider, which reads like a bizarre documentary essay on a group of militia spending a night watching for illegal immigrants in Texas, both manages to make fun of the mythology these men live by and at the same time express a gentle kind of acknowledgement of the event as, underneath it all, a bunch of guys hanging out doing stupid guy stuff like they always have.
There is also the story on his visit to Dubai, The New Mecca. There is certainly irony in various points of the story, but there is also a complex awareness of his stereotypes and prejudices about the place, and how his experience and the people he meets don't always fit in so nicely to these preconceptions. He has an honesty in his writing.
Saunders is more than a social critic - he also has some interesting things to say about world views, ways of thinking and perceiving, cultural issues and culturo-centrism. One of the more sophisticated and human authors I have read lately.
The title piece is a wonderfully sarcastic blow up of modern american media. Bitingly hilarious. The other pieces range over many ideas, but many of them share the same theme of laughing at/criticizing modern media in some way. There is even an essay on Huck Finn.
Saunders has other moods besides sarcasm. The Great Divider, which reads like a bizarre documentary essay on a group of militia spending a night watching for illegal immigrants in Texas, both manages to make fun of the mythology these men live by and at the same time express a gentle kind of acknowledgement of the event as, underneath it all, a bunch of guys hanging out doing stupid guy stuff like they always have.
There is also the story on his visit to Dubai, The New Mecca. There is certainly irony in various points of the story, but there is also a complex awareness of his stereotypes and prejudices about the place, and how his experience and the people he meets don't always fit in so nicely to these preconceptions. He has an honesty in his writing.
Saunders is more than a social critic - he also has some interesting things to say about world views, ways of thinking and perceiving, cultural issues and culturo-centrism. One of the more sophisticated and human authors I have read lately.
A Most Wanted Man - John Le Carré
Another excellent novel by this great author - very hard to put down once you start.
Again, a focus on issues in modern behind-the-scenes international politics. This time the plot is built around islamic terrorism and terrorist funding.
The real issue in the book is how misled we can be by being overly reliant, or exclusively reliant, on technology for our information and understanding of the world. In a way it ties into a larger theme of how technology dehumanizes society and our relations with people. How, without real human contact, without human sources (to use the spy analogy) it is much easier to fit the world into our preconceived notions of how things should be, into our stereotypes and self-serving, self-agrandizing and self-mythologizing narratives (hate that word). And to trample others, miss opportunities, and lose all subtle shading. Which ties into the theme of the other two books I have been reading lately, The Big Disconnect and Life Inc.. This is a theme that Ian Rankin has also begun to explore in some of his more recent work.
Again, a focus on issues in modern behind-the-scenes international politics. This time the plot is built around islamic terrorism and terrorist funding.
The real issue in the book is how misled we can be by being overly reliant, or exclusively reliant, on technology for our information and understanding of the world. In a way it ties into a larger theme of how technology dehumanizes society and our relations with people. How, without real human contact, without human sources (to use the spy analogy) it is much easier to fit the world into our preconceived notions of how things should be, into our stereotypes and self-serving, self-agrandizing and self-mythologizing narratives (hate that word). And to trample others, miss opportunities, and lose all subtle shading. Which ties into the theme of the other two books I have been reading lately, The Big Disconnect and Life Inc.. This is a theme that Ian Rankin has also begun to explore in some of his more recent work.
The Mission Song - John LeCarré
Another interesting example of how LeCarré had kept himself abreast of the challenges and issues of modern hidden government, or Deep State to borrow an expression from Turkish politics.
In this book he looks at the darker relationships between government and corporate security businesses like Haliburton and Blackhawk. He explores the logic (business logic) of privatizing intelligence gathering and also secret mission work. There is a terrible temptation there that capitalist enterprises cannot resist. There is also no accountability, no one with even half an eye on the truth. He points out how naive and vulnerable governments are in their interactions and negotiations with such firms. Privatization as an exploration, as a meeting point, of government vulnerability and business greed. Government comes across as the dupes (just like in the current situation with government power contracts in Ontario). This even touches the larger issue seemingly peculiar to our time - why leaders of both public and large corporate entities are so susceptible to the master bullshitters of the world; the people who are good at bullshit and little else (besides of course enriching themselves as much as possible at others' expense).
It also explores the vulnerability of the whistle-blower, the righteous citizen, the moral messenger, at the hands of large, corrupt government and big business.
As a book, not quite his usual gripping, compelling stuff, but still very readable and exploring some interesting ideas.
In this book he looks at the darker relationships between government and corporate security businesses like Haliburton and Blackhawk. He explores the logic (business logic) of privatizing intelligence gathering and also secret mission work. There is a terrible temptation there that capitalist enterprises cannot resist. There is also no accountability, no one with even half an eye on the truth. He points out how naive and vulnerable governments are in their interactions and negotiations with such firms. Privatization as an exploration, as a meeting point, of government vulnerability and business greed. Government comes across as the dupes (just like in the current situation with government power contracts in Ontario). This even touches the larger issue seemingly peculiar to our time - why leaders of both public and large corporate entities are so susceptible to the master bullshitters of the world; the people who are good at bullshit and little else (besides of course enriching themselves as much as possible at others' expense).
It also explores the vulnerability of the whistle-blower, the righteous citizen, the moral messenger, at the hands of large, corrupt government and big business.
As a book, not quite his usual gripping, compelling stuff, but still very readable and exploring some interesting ideas.
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