This morning when I went to scan the day’s delivery of essays, news, and information, one of the first things that came to my attention was this: Nothing Iâve heard from politicians or economists on the world crisis has shivered my spine like an hour spent with the gentleâmannered historian Antony Beevor, whose mighty new…
Tag: Morris Berman
Zombies, Digital Media, and Cultural Preservation in the New Dark Age
âHow secure is our civilizationâs accumulated knowledge?â Thatâs the question posed in a recent essay by Richard Heinberg, one of the most consistently brilliant, reasonable, and nuanced writers about the ecological and cultural-civilizational ramifications of peak fossil fuels and economic calamity. In âOur evanescent culture and the awesome duty of librarians,” he offers a detailed…
America’s Colleges at a Crossroads – Part 2
If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, you might want to go back and catch up before reading this one. Trashing education A few weeks ago I posted a link to the article that forms the backbone of part one of this series — which, again, is “A Straight-Talk Survival Guide for Colleges” by Peter…
Spiritual investment in the age of financial disaster
Greetings, Teeming Brainers. I’m back from attending the 29th annual Armadillocon in Austin, Texas, where I spoke on several panels (and served as moderator for one of them, which was a new experience) and enjoyed hobnobbing with various writers, editors, and fans of science fiction, fantasy, and speculative literature. It was a nice time overall….
Anna Nicole Smith Is the Fourth Horseman
The only daily newspaper that originates from my part of the world is The News-Leader, which is located in Springfield, Missouri. It blankets southwest Missouri and part of Arkansas. Last Tuesday, February 13th, editorial page editor Tony Messenger posted a brief observation at his blog, “Ozarks Messenger,” titled “A sign of the apocalypse…” It read…
Planet of the Dead, or Is dehumanization so bad?
One of the most nightmarish things about a dark age is the degradation that it entails for life’s overall tone, not least in the dehumanization that occurs when a people’s intellectual, emotional, moral, spiritual, political, social, and cultural life in general is reduced to a ghastly level of brutishness and ignorance. As is now plainly…
War, torture, and the failure of the American experiment
Once again, an online conversation has elicited enough words from me that I’ve realized they would make for a good blog post. A word of warning, though: I’m afraid it reads like a sermon or lecture. And a rambling one at that. Or worse, it may read like a one-sided conversation — which indeed it…
High tide for anti-intellectualism
This post is in response to a query somebody made at the Shocklines forum. In various conversations at that board, people have recently been mentioning a supposed surge of anti-intellectualism in America today. One person responded with the following: I’ve been hearing a lot about this ‘wave of anti-intellectualism’. I’m curious about it. All artistic…