-- under the illusions of mass-marketing
-- or under the yoke of slavery to dishonest government
-- or in the confines of fear of this or that version of God
-- or behind the bars of your own ignorance,
then you should NOT read this book.
Only people who yearn to find broader awareness and deeper understanding of how the world works should read this.
Everyone else can just stay in their own chosen confinements of the life they choose and be satisfied with their immediate gratification of ignorance.
In his new book, Robert Grudin challenges us all to reach beyond the common beliefs and the truth that power holders twist up into balls of nefarious myths in order to keep us stupid. As John Stuart Mill once wrote, “society wants to keep you stupid because the dumber you are, the easier it is to manipulate you.”
Grudin states the premise of his book clearly:
”What follows is a meditation on American vulgarity: its components, its causes, and its possible cures. I realize that Americans tend to be uneasy with the V-word, usually linking it to the snotty tastes of some ancient regime. My response to this is that only the word vulgarity can describe the particular combination of gullibility, ignorance, and self-indulgence that characterizes the American marketplace, and only the word vulgarizing can describe the various hucksters who manipulate public choice.” |
This concept could not be more blatant than in the dark days of American history when our own elected White House Administration had led us to war based on lies. Then, to add insult to injury, our political leaders lied to us, the American public, again just to keep us at war.
Grudin lays it out in a cool, concise vision. First, in Part I of this book, he breaks down the sham that spreads a veil over our culture. He parses out the various flavors of ”vulgar” and reminds us that we have to make an effort to keep ourselves free from the traps of ignorance.
America is all about freedom. But, unless we question and freely doubt the tenants of such big claims, we are tethered down to living on the surface. We become bitter, cynical, and miserable when we let ourselves follow the easiest paths, the common beliefs. Each of us, as individuals, is responsible for our own freedom. As many say, freedom comes at a price.
Critical Thinking
We cannot rely on government to protect us. We have to be self-reliant, self-governing as voters, as consumers, and as individuals. This holds especially when government seems to work much like a subsidiary of the corporations who buy into politicians through campaign donations, otherwise known as bribes.
As Grudin acknowledges, this insight offers neither originality nor novelty; the ancients of Greece and elsewhere recognized that political discourse operates by varying degrees of deceit. Even the ancient Greek gods often misled mortals and other gods alike. Deities of this nature served to help keep people on guard and constantly thinking critically in terms of the ulterior motives others might intend to impose through deceit for self-interests.
Grudin points out that the American educational system offers its students little protection against deceit. Most college graduates are fully certified degree holders of gullibility and credulity. The bureaucrats who carefully shape college curricula fall dreadfully short in training students in critical thinking. And we need not mention what skills citizens gain from public high schools. What's more painful is a citizenry that voted for it and a congress who gave the President a blank check for a war without doubting its justifications. Symptoms of a culture gone haywire.
So, our culture breeds vulgarity at its nurturing core where the young suckle on the tit of would-be enlightenment. Once graduated, certificate in hand, they go forth into the world gullible enough to reelect a president who lied to justify a war based on extremist ideology. We know our society is falling deep into a pit when our political leaders concoct a war by a small group of men, mostly from the petroleum industry, and not for the benefit of the public.
Vulgarity and Economics
We must make an effort to find our liberty and enjoy it. This is a daily task because everywhere we find advertisers, politicians, and holy-rollers seeking to persuade us on one issue or another. Unless we develop our own sense of critical thinking, we become the victims of someone else’s version of truth.
Some want us to believe in this or that God. Others want us to eat this or that food. Still others want us to follow their political ideology. What's a person to think?
In an ideal world, everyone would understand that vulgar deception of customers leads to waste of valuable resources. This brings up the tobacco industry, the fast food business, and almost any other industry. American corporations often use their vulgar power of advertising persuasion to coax people into buying their products regardless of their harmful effects. A wiser marketplace, one where consumers know the benefits and possible hazards, would vote with their wallet for or against products. Can we count on government to restrain corporate greed?
Complacency
The entire American public prefers most often to stroll through life complacent. Complacency rides on the back of vulgarity like the parasitical fungus on the back of the Arabian camel. Complacency is the attitude that ignores problems, even whole sectors of problems, on the pretext that they are “comparatively minor and will go away.”
Grudin uses the Clinton impeachment case to illustrate this particular species of vulgarity :
”This emotional muddle, this disregard for the important in favor of the trivial, this typically American deflation of meaning and attention, reached its climax in early 1998, when the press learned of President Clinton’s erotic relationship with a White House intern. For many weeks world news was hung out to dry in favor of one of the most banal, most predictable, and least disturbing of interactions: a young woman’s fling with a middle-aged power monger…The media knew that they could do a land office business in American vulgarity. True the affair might be of no real importance at all,…just the sort of thing that the American public would lap up.” |
Complacency and Depression
The author shows a convincing link between complacency and depression. Complacent people are not happy. They become cynical and bitter because they have lost purpose of life. Instead, they simply drift along in the flow of conformity and common, preconceived values. When people are complacent, they wall themselves off from solving problems or from controversial topics and interactions. They lose touch with one of the basic aspects of happiness – engaging life and taking responsibility.
Grudin writes, “You could actually call depression Bartleby Syndrome, after Herman Melville’s fictional scribe who worked on Wall Street and whose office window opened onto a brick wall.”
In Part I, of this book, Gurdin covers the details of these topics I’ve touched upon. He finally makes an astute observation about the link between crime and vulgarity.
White collar crimes are slightly more subtle, less immediately lethal, less bloody, but nonetheless equally deadly as violent street crimes. Well educated, church going, socially adjusted and conforming professionals commit white collar crimes. They are devised in the plush executive offices of tobacco, fast food and other industries where products are deliberately designed to addict consumers to harmful habits.
On the other hand, violent street crimes are committed in blatantly vulgar terms. Grudin considers the case of the Columbine High School shootings.
He places Michael Moore’s documentary on this subject in the category of vulgar along with most of the trendy and fashionable products issued from American culture:
Moore’s film has been parised as an act of liberalism, when instead we may ask whether Bowling is not a form of liberal vulgarity: the tendency to brainstorm rather than observe, the choice of a sexy quick-fix explanation (the “culture of fear”) over the challenging process of social analysis. |
Awareness
In Part II, of his book, Grudin goes beyond an analysis of what is going dreadfully wrong with American culture. He elucidates a solution and thus becomes more than an armchair observer and commentator of our society. He becomes a healing shaman for our times.
What is the medicine we prescribe to ourselves to dig our culture out of the pit it’s falling into?
I could tell you…but then, I’d have to summarize Grudin’s book which is already too short, too concise. And in summarizing such insightful writing, I, too, then would fall into that pit among the vulgar. Giving you the cliff-notes version of this book would not do it or your intelligence justice.
You’ll just have to read it for yourself. It’s a short and extremely well written book that touches on the edges of “self-help.” Yet, it’s a higher level of self-help than you’ll find anywhere else because it’s a healing remedy for an ailing culture.
Read it and find some light in an otherwise dim world littered with the bright neon lights of glitz and gold.
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