Empire of Illusion
Ratings3
Average rating3.3
15
Ratings3
Average rating3.3
Pulitzer prize–winner Chris Hedges charts the dramatic and disturbing rise of a post-literate society that craves fantasy, ecstasy and illusion. Chris Hedges argues that we now live in two societies: One, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. In this “other society,” serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins. In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Hedges navigates this culture — attending WWF contests as well as Ivy League graduation ceremonies — exposing an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.
Reviews with the most likes.
Chris Hedges makes a lot of salient points but then he repeats them and repeats them again. This whole book would be better as just one essay. Poor Chris just comes across as a cranky contrarian instead of an insightful social critic.
It's end times for academics. Hedges bewails the plethora of in-your-face-ness in America: wrestling, tv, even government and universities. Thoughtful discourse is found tedious, he moans. “We are chained to the flickering shadows of celebrity culture....”
No one who spent an hour in our country could deny this. It's obvious. Hedges spends two hundred pages visiting all the most worrisome spots in American culture, pleading his case that America is in trouble. Bread and circuses everywhere, but more: bread tainted with toxins and circuses of the depraved.
Yes, America is definitely the land of spectacle these days. But does that mean doom for the country?
Like most books of this sort, Empire is long on problems and short on solutions. A careful look at the stats that prop up Hedges' treatise shows the author is prone to the very thing he is ranting against; Hedges' book is filled with, well, illusion and spectacle.
