Morris Berman, cultural historian and social critic

[kangarunner]

Has anyone heard of Morris Berman? I read a comment I think on one of Winston's articles and then Googled him. I'm starting to read his articles on his blog.

https://morrisberman.blogspot.com/2011/ ... rview.html

We Americans don’t realize what a strange, and indeed perverse, way that is to live, because if everyone is doing it, it just becomes normal. But Paul Fussell, in his book Class, has a very low opinion of this supposedly normal way of life: “In the United States,” he writes, “everything is coated with a fine layer of fraud.” I suspect most Americans experience the truth of this on some level, and I think it is why we always rate low on international happiness polls: very few of our relationships are real, including our relationship to our work, and consequently our lives are pretty empty. We attempt to fill that emptiness with cars and houses and computers and cell phones, but in the end, it doesn’t work. As one of Jimmy Carter’s advisers put it thirty-two years ago, the United States is “a goal-oriented society without goals.” “More” is not a real goal; it has no actual content.

Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Ages-Americ ... 0393329771

Why America Failed: The Roots of Imperial Decline

https://www.amazon.com/Why-America-Fail ... 1118061810

[kangarunner]

35:02 - "In the global market, in terms of volume of sales, Americans consumption of antidepressants is 2/3 of the entire world's consumption. Here's a country with less than 5% of the population taking 67% of the antidepressant drugs. This has got to tell you something about the United States.

[kangarunner]

On the second video:

1:11:20 –

“My advice to Canada or Mexico or Estonia for that matter is “keep your distance. This is not a model for you to copy. It’s not what you should be doing. Above all, the United States is the great experiment in getting people to give up what counts most as a human being and to subsititute toys for it. Substitute satisfaction. Bigger house, bigger income, more toys and all that and meanwhile you’re rotting on the inside. That is the legacy of the U.S. And I would encourage any nation, don’t go down that path.”

1:00:29 –

“When young people write in, I say what do you think your old age is gonna be in the US when 40 years from now we’re making one more war on one country that’s not threatening us at all on the other side of the planet and spending trillions of dollars to do it, when we have no social safety net, Medicare or whatever by that time. What do you think your future’s gonna look like? If you have any brains now, you’ll hit the road, and do it soon. And I’m quite serious about that. There’s no hyperbole involved. You will have a better life if you go somewhere else. Do the research. Find out what are your language skills. Can you get into graduate school in France? Whatever it is, go somewhere. You don’t want to be an old person in the United States. There’s nothing waiting for you. So I’m quite serious about that.“

“For those that write into me and say “I can’t leave. I’m tied to my family and my job. That’s when I refer them to the Twilight book, the first in the series. I developed the concept there of what I call the new monastic individual, a person that withdraws from the mess of the culture and basically tries to preserve the things that are most valuable about the culture.“

1:05:11 –

“In mexico, I know what daily life is like there. It’s not about worrying about getting kidnapped or getting shot by a narco. I’m not worried about that. What I know is that on a daily basis, the kids do not look at their lives as grim and to watch kids play soccer using not a ball because they can’t afford it, but bottle caps from a coca cola bottle and they love it and you see it and you say this is what life is about. Not about having the latest software application so you can cut your lawn while you do whatever it is you want to do. That’s why I specifically titled that book of essays a question of values because it is a question of values. My values were not US values. My problem for me was I was inundated by them and I felt like I was dying and moving to Mexico gave me new life. Just to give you an idea, within 4 years, I wrote 4 books. One being a volume of poetry and the other a novel. That’s what Mexico does. You can’t get that in the US. You’re harried all the time. All the time.”

“It's also because of a culture that has the wrong values. And it’s impressing it upon those values on you from TV, your neighbors, and everybody else all the time. And finally, you wind up having nobody to talk to. It wasn’t fun for me. And I got plenty of people to talk to now. Just in Spanish.“

That truly is the worst thing in the world. When you realize you’re the only sane person who is thinking clearly and properly and everyone else around you is trapped in some kind of mental illusion.

[kangarunner]

@Winston

On the second video:

1:11:20 –

“My advice to Canada or Mexico or Estonia for that matter is “keep your distance. This is not a model for you to copy. It’s not what you should be doing. Above all, the United States is the great experiment in getting people to give up what counts most as a human being and to subsititute toys for it. Substitute satisfaction. Bigger house, bigger income, more toys and all that and meanwhile you’re rotting on the inside. That is the legacy of the U.S. And I would encourage any nation, don’t go down that path.”

1:00:29 –

“When young people write in, I say what do you think your old age is gonna be in the US when 40 years from now we’re making one more war on one country that’s not threatening us at all on the other side of the planet and spending trillions of dollars to do it, when we have no social safety net, Medicare or whatever by that time. What do you think your future’s gonna look like? If you have any brains now, you’ll hit the road, and do it soon. And I’m quite serious about that. There’s no hyperbole involved. You will have a better life if you go somewhere else. Do the research. Find out what are your language skills. Can you get into graduate school in France? Whatever it is, go somewhere. You don’t want to be an old person in the United States. There’s nothing waiting for you. So I’m quite serious about that.“

“For those that write into me and say “I can’t leave. I’m tied to my family and my job. That’s when I refer them to the Twilight book, the first in the series. I developed the concept there of what I call the new monastic individual, a person that withdraws from the mess of the culture and basically tries to preserve the things that are most valuable about the culture.“

1:05:11 –

“In mexico, I know what daily life is like there. It’s not about worrying about getting kidnapped or getting shot by a narco. I’m not worried about that. What I know is that on a daily basis, the kids do not look at their lives as grim and to watch kids play soccer using not a ball because they can’t afford it, but bottle caps from a coca cola bottle and they love it and you see it and you say this is what life is about. Not about having the latest software application so you can cut your lawn while you do whatever it is you want to do. That’s why I specifically titled that book of essays a question of values because it is a question of values. My values were not US values. My problem for me was I was inundated by them and I felt like I was dying and moving to Mexico gave me new life. Just to give you an idea, within 4 years, I wrote 4 books. One being a volume of poetry and the other a novel. That’s what Mexico does. You can’t get that in the US. You’re harried all the time. All the time.”

“It's also because of a culture that has the wrong values. And it’s impressing it upon those values on you from TV, your neighbors, and everybody else all the time. And finally, you wind up having nobody to talk to. It wasn’t fun for me. And I got plenty of people to talk to now. Just in Spanish.“

That truly is the worst thing in the world. When you realize you’re the only sane person who is thinking clearly and properly and everyone else around you is trapped in some kind of mental illusion.