Alex Wright

The Twilight of American Culture

July 29, 2006

I recently picked up a copy of Morris Berman's The Twilight of American Culture (recently reissued in a new 2006 edition), a sobering portrait of a country on the brink of economic, cultural and spiritual implosion.

Berman argues that we are on the precipice of a new Dark Age, as witnessed by the acceleration of social and economic inequality, the rise of corporate values and social collectivism, the ongoing "moronization" of popular entertainment, and the decline of traditional intellectual culture.

None of these arguments is particularly new, of course. And I will confess my initial reaction was to write off Berman as an old guard critic flailing for credibility in a post-McLuhan world. But Berman makes such an eloquent, diligently researched case that he at least demands a hearing. Moreover, he does more than just catalog a list of complaints; he suggests specific steps people might take to stem the tide.

Berman is certainly not the first writer to note the similarities between America and Rome on the brink of decline: a growing gulf between rich and poor, mass enthusiasm for sports and popular entertainments, the decline of older literary traditions, and the rise of pseudo-spiritual cults (the latter day Romans had their own equivalent of a New Age movement). The parallels are inexact, as Berman readily acknowledges, but nonetheless instructive.

Just as classical culture ultimately survived Rome's fall in the hands of a few determined monks working in obscurity to preserve the old texts, Berman argues, an equivalent underground movement - a "new monasticism" - may hold the best hope for preserving our cultural heritage in the face of a looming Dark Age.

Today's "monk" is committed to a renewed sense of self, and to the avoidance of groupthink, including anticorporate or anti-consumer culture groupthink. The monastic option will not be served by the new monastic "class" being a class of any sort... Not that like-minded souls shouldn't make connections, but the key is to keep these links informal." Berman's vision of a new monasticism feels resonant in an age when so much of our cultural apparatus seems to encourage us to seek solace in groups (be they teams, social groups or virtual communities), or to pursue the tonic of public attention as a salve for the loneliness of being human. The medieval monks, working in isolation, eschewing all hope of fame, and quietly engaging the wisdom of a lost empire, do indeed seem like the best kind of avatars you could hope for.

While Berman puts forward a cogent argument - and his riffs about monasticism make for especially compelling reading - I don't entirely buy all of his premises. For one thing, he draws an oversimplistic distinction between old and new media; he fails to consider the role of oral traditions; and he tends to write off the Internet with such broad rhetorical brush strokes that one is tempted to wonder whether he has ever actually seen the thing. Given that this book was first written in 2000, perhaps Berman can be forgiven for failing to recognize that the Web might just hold out the best hope for the new monasticism he envisions. As I wondered a couple of years ago, perhaps bloggers may just be our generation's heirs to the scribes of yore?

Those criticisms aside, this is a worthwhile book that provides a useful counterweight to the recent epidemic of sunny new media optimism. Highly recommended.

File under: Books

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