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 Being uninformed is a way of life. Or maybe it isn't Mar 17, 2010
Thank you, Susan Jacoby, for calling a spade a spade. This book is spot on. Since when did it become apropos to be anti-intellectual? When did knowing the facts and engaging in lively debate become anti-American. Susan Jacoby provides an engaging anthropological study of this American trend. I've read all of her books and appreciate her place in our intellectual society.
 Incomplete but Entertaining Feb 13, 2010
While I enjoyed this book a lot, I think the thinking is somewhat inconsistent, since it jumps around from historical facts to observations and opinion, and personal recollections. I am very sympathetic to the author, having lived in Berkeley from 1965 to 1967, and agree with her jibes at the intellectual arrogance and elitism of student radicals. Some of the stylistic jumps are confusing, as if part of the book was never translated from notes to text with much thought. The criticism of "video" as a code word for television is confusing. There is no reference to the book from 50 years' ago, The Glass Teat, about the power of television. Overall entertaining but incomplete and scattered, but what can be expected with such an immense topic.
1 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Scholarly rather than polemic Dec 27, 2009
Jacoby's book is a cogent and serious look at a subject that could all too easily have been trivialised. As the title indicates, the book treats with specifically American forms of unreason, but the problem of public ignorance and junk thinking is fast advancing in the English-speaking world as a whole. Why this should be is not entirely answered by the book, as the anglosphere is without its remit. As the problem in the USA is strongly linked to specifically US historical and political contingencies, as portrayed by Jacoby, this is something of a problem in its own right. Jacoby also covers aspects of modern culture which are not peculiarly American, however, especially the immediacy of visual media, and I suspect that this is where the answer lies. In the United Kingdom, the approach of Tony Blair to managing the media during an election could be summed up in the phrase, "Verbs lose elections." Jacoby lays great stress on the attention-seizing aspect of visual media such as television and the internet, in which a "race to to the bottom" is created as competing information sources vie to shout above the din and keep the user's attention with ever shorter and simpler messages. Time for reflection, as one enjoys while reading, is increasingly rare.
This alone does not explain the active rejection of intellectualism that grips US society more than any other technological culture, however. In its level of intellectual curiosity as measured by knowledge of science, geography and even its own history, the USA appears to be clustered with African and Islamic societies rather than its post-industrial peers. How did the most successful technological society in the world manage to regress to this status? Jacoby's answer includes the malign influence of religious fundamentalism, uniquely a factor in US life; the course taken by politics, with blame accruing to both sides but the balance due to to Republican populist tactics; a cyclical tendency in US life, with intellectualism and respect for science waxing and waning over the decades; technology itself, with a majority of American homes having two or three televisions, programming now actually targetting babies younger than two years and individuals increasingly isolated from discourse in an iPod bubble.
Jacoby's book is not at all humorous, but one must occasionally smile at the inconsistencies she uncovers. While much of the US public has in a way opted for stupidity through religion, in effect rejecting the whole of modern science in favour of a literalist Biblical model of the world that flatly rejects reality, they are not actually that well-informed about the Bible, either. A majority of adults cannot name the four Gospels, according to Jacoby, and believe that "God helps those who help themselves" is a Biblical quote.
Politically, Jacoby apportions blame to both left and right. US liberals are not immune to junk thought, having cloven to a series of pseudoscientific ideas about education and other social subjects. I would attribute this to stupidity, however, while the behaviour of US conservatives can often only be described as malign. As Jacoby describes, the Republicans have rather successfully managed to portray expertise as elitism in a deliberate effort to get the public to reject politically- or religiously-inconvenient science. Anthropogenic warming, evolution, prophylaxis for HIV - a longish and ignoble list of cases is shown where the spoilt fratboys of the Bush Administration successfully played the "elitism" card to undermine rationalist approaches to really serious problems and scientific understanding. The Administration employed intellectuals - Jacoby credits them with being such - such as Wolfowitz purely to provide a patina of intellectual support for the rotting hulk of its religious ideology. By using intellectuals as a rubber stamp in this way, the Administration not only belied its false objection to "elitism", it undermined the position of intellectuals in American life. No effort was made to draw on contrary opinion to reach better-informed decisions; only confirmation was required.
Jacoby credits the likes of Wolfowitz with being intellectuals, despite their rejection of reality-based understanding. She argues, fairly, that if they were stupid they would not be so dangerous, as it is an intellectual vocabulary which successfully makes irrationality sound plausible. I would not be so generous. Stupidity is often deliberate, and the deliberate misuse of intellectual tools to reject reality is a form of deliberate stupidity. On this small detail alone I would take issue with Jacoby.
This use of intellectuals for ideological confirmation must stop, argues Jacoby, if intellectuals are to regain a respected position and the apotheosis of the stupid is to be reversed. I agree. The moment, interestingly, may have arrived for America while the rest of the post-industrial world is in decline. The signs from Obama are that he is prepared to use lofty rhetoric in public rather than patronising the public as "folks" too stupid to appreciate fine words. The signs are that Obama may pursue science-based policies and listen to intellectuals rather than merely hiring those who say what he wants to hear. At any rate, the Presidency is only the tip of an iceberg floating on a sea of individuals who have no time to read newspapers, who put a TV in their children's room to avoid reading to them and who isolate themselves from conversation behind a portable wall of sound. Change cannot come only from above, but rationalist policies on education may begin a shift. At any rate, Jacoby argues, and shows with examples, that the rhetoric of the new Administration seems to have restored intellectual discourse as a credible way of addressing the public, and that must be a step in the right direction. America may be on the cusp of one of its periodic reversals. One can hope. Whether the rest of us in the anglosphere can aspire to such hope is a different question.
Jacoby is concerned, even contemptuous, but she has not written a crude polemic, and certainly not a hagiography of liberals, who share much of the blame. Rather, she has sought and carefully elucidated historical roots and antecedents for this society of always-on bread-and-circuses connections. She has also addressed solutions. This book is dry, but full of scholarly insight and compulsively readable. Thoroughly recommended reading.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Even the Brightest and Keenest Mind Finds it Hard to Stick to Evidence Based Argument Dec 19, 2009
This long lament over the decline of intellectual vigor in America had a number of interesting effects on me. I felt heartened that someone was raising the flag and sounding the call to start thinking again, and I felt some solace that there still are intellectuals out there, however few and far between, but I also felt my chest swell a bit to be part of that glowing and bright band of individuals who value true dialogue and conversation, who seek understanding and clarity of mind, and who choose to learn because of the shear pleasure of doing so. Rah Rah!
Jacoby's piercing and detailed analysis of American history, the movements towards and away from intellectual rigor, and the role of religion and politics in shaping an ignorant culture is impressive. It does not quite convince me, however, that science, academia, and secular realism will provide what is needed for individuals to pursue, much less achieve, life, liberty, and happiness.
Her judgmental dismissal of new technologies, no matter how well buttressed with examples and reason, left me shaking my head. She is missing so much of the power of the internet, for example, that I wonder where she was Googling to in her perusal of blogs and message boards.
Her barbed criticism of purveyors of junk thought, junk science, and junk ideas, is brilliant, but then she herself makes some grand pronouncements -- arguing, for the most part, from a position which can only be described as pure rhetoric. This demonstrates that even the brightest and keenest mind finds it hard to stick to evidence based argument.
I wish everyone would read this book, but chances are it will be read mostly by other intellectuals who will commiserate and feel a deep twinge of nostalgia.
2 of 3 found the following review helpful:
WAKE-UP CALL Nov 28, 2009
Susan Jacoby's book THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON may anger many readers who identify most closely with the complaints Jacoby observes, but whether the reader agrees with her analysis of the dumbing down of the American mind instilled by the current reliance on twittering, computer blogs, talk show hosts, the shocking statistics about the quality of education let alone the fact the few Americans even read books of any kind, or the demise of real journalism in this country, the writer takes a stance that should serve as a wake-up call. Often in order to make a point or substantiate a thought the author must overstate the case and perhaps this is the way many readers find Jacoby's writing. But the topics Jacoby discusses, whether in giving examples of the speeches by some of the leaders of the country or analyzing the trends in communication (a shallow repetition of instant word of mouth or blog or twitter). it is obvious merely by turning on the radio or watching computer news flashes that topics ranging from runaway air balloon frauds to the degree of severity of Tiger Woods' injuries from a night's car episode to the varying number of deaths reported during world events that 'gossip' has replaced thinking. Jacoby warns that we tend to repeat shallow reports instead of thinking and investigating or searching for fact.
To quote Jacoby from her introductory comments to this analysis of the Age of American Unreason: 'America is now ill with a powerful mutant strain of intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism - as opposed to the recognizable cyclical strains of the past - the virulence of the current outbreak is inseparable from an unmindfulness that is, paradoxically, both aggressive and passive. This condition is aggressively promoted by everyone, from politicians to media executives, whose livelihood depends on a public that derives its opinions from sound bites and blogs, and it is passively accepted by a public in thrall to the serpent promising effortless enjoyment form the fruit of the tree of infotainment.' Frightening words, yes, words that anger many readers perhaps, but there is truth among these words and the rest of her book that deserves to be at least considered when we evaluate the present condition of our minds. Grady Harp, November 09
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