American Unreason

I'm reading a book, The Age of American Unreason, which is very, very good. No, it's not a novel. And, remarkably, my guess is the author and I don't share political or economic views. Nevertheless, Susan Jacoby has written a thought-provoking, insightful book. And, in keeping with that, I'm thinking a lot about what she's written.

The examples she uses to further explain her ideas are always the cads of the right, never the cads of the left. But that's a minor matter. It's pretty easy to find substitutes.

Among her bogeymen is television/videos. Of course it's a cause of "unreason," despite all of the good intentions, the claims of grandeur, and the promise television once had. There's a reason many of us call it "the boob tube." Television and videos, "restrict their audiences intellectual paramaters not only by providing information in a highly condensed form, but by filling time...that used to be occupied by engagement with the written word." Yes, indeed, these media screen out ideas, subjecting "audiences" to one side or another. Regarding our children, television makes "it unnecessary for young children to entertain themselves, but also discourages them from thinking and fantasizing outside the box...." For all of us, television is deleterious to our own thoughts. "Without memory," [note how you can tune in to any television show and within seconds know precisely what happened before you tuned in] "judgments are made on the unsound basis of the most recent bit of half-digested information."

I must have had a premonition about this book, months before I read it. I continue to be amazed, and not in a flattering way, at people's continued hagiographic depictions of contemporary songwriters as great poets--or poets of any quality for that matter. The one I always think of is Bob Dylan, but we can add Lennon and McCartney, Paul Simon (as Jacoby does), and others. Have we forgotten what real quality poetry is? Do we even know who Keats, Byron, Tennyson, and Frost are? Jacoby notes a speech by Robert Kennedy upon the assassination of Martin Luther King. His source for comfort was Euripides and Jacoby includes relevant excerpts from the moving words. No doubt, she adds, today's politicians (dare we say "statesmen?) would drag out words from Bob Dylan--to avoid sneers of "elitism" and "arrogance." (There's plenty of room to use those terms with our leaders out there; this isn't one of those fitting times.) We can extrapolate that to music as well. OK, I much prefer listening to Aretha or Smokey than Beethoven. But I don't ever equate what they do/sing to what Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, etc. have written. They are two very different matters, sort of like the Dairy Queen League and the Majors.

My math buddies are fond of saying, "If you start with a false premise, you can prove anything." Yep, and Jacoby writes of our current predilection for doing so. She calls it "using logic in a closed-system...cloaking anti-rational premises in the language of philosophy and science." A continuing theme for her in this regard is the use of the term "theory" to defend creationism vs evolution. The everyday definition of "theory" is quite different from the scientific definition of "theory." I saw that last weekend, before I read the book, in an op-ed piece by an ACLU lawyer regarding the flap over ObamaCare, contraceptives, insurance coverage, and Catholics. In her very first paragraph she made a statement that she asserted as fact, when, in fact, it was not so. It was her belief, but certainly not fact. That made the rest of her argument moot, not worth the newsprint it was written on.

Speaking of that flap, Jacoby has some things to say about "Cafeteria Catholics," you know, the ones who claim they are "good Catholics," but pick and choose which Church doctrines to follow. Claiming the Church is "out of touch," "outdated," etc. is not a rationale. Either one believes what the Church teaches about artificial birth control, homosexuality, remarriage after divorce, etc. or one should find a new church. The Church holds that those who don't follow its teachings on these matters have committed mortal sins. "Cafeteria Catholics'" contentions that they aren't mortal sins doesn't make them not.

Speaking of religion, many Americans are, correctly, concerned with the appearance of some Shar'ia law in our courts. Hmmm.... How does this measure up with well over 50% of fundamentalist Christians and Black Protestants believe that the Bible should be the basis of our system of jurisprudence? Toss that one around in your mind for a few minutes.

Can there be personal morality? Or is God the ultimate authority? Of course, that begs the question of "whose God?" Can just government be based on things other than Christianity and/or the Bible?

Is a college education intended to challenge or to reinforce the values that students learned as children? Hmmm....

Jacoby is thought-provoking indeed.