Dewey's Laboratory School Book

Morris Berman's alarming book of 183 pages was written in 2001, and I read it a year or two later. I was curious to reread the book and see its relevance 10 years later. Closing the book, I think that its analysis of the decline of American culture is as true now as a decade ago. In fact, the situation is much worse.
Berman looked at the cult of money and consumerism that permeates U.S. life, the dominance of hype and propaganda, the squeezing of the middle class, and the redistribution of wealth upward (sound familiar?). He described the widespread solipsism and resentment of so much of the residents of this country. He saw colleges and universities becoming no more than providers of job training. He also examined the corporate oligarchy that devalues our democracy and the anti-intellectualism (and indeed anti-science attitude of one of our major political parties) that coarsens public discussion.
He wrote that the U.S. has reached the stage depicted by Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451." However, unlike the situation in that 1953 book, now the government doesn't have to ban books; people these days are ceasing to read books, magazines, and newspapers - and are abandoning critical thinking and the pursuit of knowledge - quite on their own. "It may even be the case that the number of genuinely literate adults in the United States amounts to fewer than 5 million people - that is, less than 3 percent of the total population."
Little of this is new, but Berman was one of the earlier people to sound the alarm.
Berman thinks we are in a Dark Age and it is getting darker all the time. As was the case in medieval Europe where monasteries preserved the wisdom of ancient Greece and Rome until the flowering of the Renaissance, Berman proposes the "monastic option" in the 21st century. "We can include in it traditions of craftsmanship, care, and integrity; preservation of canons of scholarship, critical thinking, and the Enlightenment tradition; combatting the forces of environmental degradation and social inequality; valuing individual achievement and independent thought; and so on. But central to all these examples is the rejection of a life based on kitsch, consumerism, and profit, or on power, fame, and self-promotion."
Anyone who reads this review and wants to study my manuscripts and discuss literature, music, philosophy, movies, politics, language, or the meaning of life is always welcomed to my monastery -- in person or my e-mail. I will even share my red wine.