The Culture of Make Believe

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Summary: Will make you consider a different point of view...
Review: I assign this book when I teach Race and Ethnic relations to students at a University. This book really outlines the systematic process that people at the top of the hierarchy go through to maintain the status quo (status top). Any resistence is met by annihilation and no resistence means that the minority group has successfully been silenced. I highly recommend this book and Jensen's other book "A language older than words" that suggests that because of our unfortunate mentality ($$$$$$$$$$$$-though shall have no other gods before me) we have forgotten the language that allowed us to communicate as equals with other beings and the land, not as dominators focused on exploiting (see Raine Eisler's work). If you like to think, and most do not (let's not step out of our comfort level), this is a book that will get you thinking!!!

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Summary: the BIG picture
Review: I bought this book on a whim, not having heard of Jensen's previous book, and I must say, I was thoroughly enlightened. I had just finished reading Raoul Vaneigem's (The Parisian Situationist) "The Revolution of Everyday Life," and these two works complement each other nicely.
I really didn't know where the author was going with this book, what the main, underlying theme was, and at times it felt that the chapters wandered somewhat without structure (I read the book over a couple days, couldn't put it down), but by the end, his message becomes quite clear, and you're left with a soft, quiet whisper rolling off your lips, chanting "anarchism."
Of course his prose and means of unravelling his story make for much greater subtlety in his message. Jensen begins with the question of hatred, and why it has so dominated 'modern' Western European civilization. He asks what the source of this hatred is, or if in fact it is hatred that has driven us to conquer and enslave so many millions of people, like no other civilization has done before or since.
Without going into great detail (I mean, I won't go into great detail; the author, on the other hand, is full of detail and excellent research, quotes, etc), Jensen reasonably concludes that it is not the inhumanity of the white race that accomplishes this (we are not biologically different), but the inhumanity, the objectivity of our social and economic system. This was a central theme to Vaneigem's "Revolution," what the Situationist's called the 'Spectacle': the objectifying of our world and culture, to the extent that human beings are and can no longer act subjectively, everything is an object, we view everything 'quantitatively' as opposed to 'qualitatively.'
Now that I think about it, there are many great parallels to the Situationist's theory of our society (written about in the 1960's) and Jensen's. I highly recommend both books, as they would make for a week of mental revolution, the likes of which few of us are privileged enough to experience.

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Summary: Discover a better way to live
Review: I have always wondered why our society and its leaders seem a bit "off" when making decisions about the policies and the direction of America. This book opened my eyes to the underlying motivations of our society and helped me understand why truly beneficial agendas rarely come to fruition.

It is not a book that provided many answers. Rather, it is a book that raised many questions by shedding a sobering light on past and current events. The answers, I am discovering, slowly come when I decide to change the way I live so it is more in harmony with nature and more beneficial to our society.

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Summary: One of the Most Important Books Ever Written!
Review: I have purchased this book twice to give away as presents to people whom I believed would benefit from reading it. I plan to purchase a third copy just to have but I think everyone needs to read this book. This book changed my whole outlook on life but the information, truth and knowledge therein is emotionally hard to swallow. I mean to say that it's "deep" is the understatement of the year. Being in the military, I am doing my little part to keep this mad spectacle of civilization going. Jensen points out that it's kinda hopeless to change the world at this point. And I've tried my best even though I am cynical, to believe that we can still turn things around and save ourselves but it's pretty hopeless.

I would rate this book as being more important than the Bible. I say this not to be sacreligious or crass, but as an honest heartfelt statement. Jenson attempted to discover the origin of hate, to analyze the condition of hatred as manisfested throughout American History. I really can't describe the impact of this book. It's highly recommended.

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Summary: Where are the editors of yesteryear?
Review: I loved Jensen's "A Language Older than Words," and though I concurr with his thoughtful, albeit depressing view of the world explored in this book, I am forced to agree with the criticisms of reviewer Glines. Jensen undermines his arguments with his bloated prose and unexamined examples. I look forward to Jensen's next book, by which time I hope he has found a careful editor to help him hone his points.

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Summary: A must read
Review: I read this book after completing Derrick's excellent book, A Language Older Than Words, and was again astounded by the wonderful prose and well-researched facts that were prevalent thoughout The Culture of Make Believe. I recommend this to anybody who wants a better view of how things really are. It certainly changed my mind about a lot of things, even though I normally take such books with a grain of salt.

When I had finished the book, I passed it around to several of my friends, friends whom I thought wouldn't be so receptive to anti-culture themes present in the book, and each thanked me afterwards. Anybody claiming that this book preaches to the choir is obviously full of themselves from assuming anything that will help get their arguement across.

Though this book is much longer than his first, it didn't carry much unneeded baggage, and I easily finished it within a few days. If anything, I wished that it had gone deeper into exploring the 'Dark Heart of Civilization', but after finishing, my mind was satisfied.

Again, I say read this book, it will certainly change your viewpoint, unless your viewpoint is already beyond saving.

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Summary: Derrick Jensen does it again!
Review: I thought Jensen had said all he had to say about the destructiveness of our in in A Language Older Than Words. Apparently he had a lot more to say in The Culture of Make Believe.
Jensen strips this culture down to its nakedness and lets us see for ourselves what it really looks like, and how inhumane it actually is. He uses the examples of slavery, genocide, ecocide, rape, child abuse, wage slavery, racism, hate, contempt, his personal experience of being abused, and prostitution, than shows the continuity of these acts throughout the history of our culture, which was founded ten thousand years ago.
As dismal as it may sound, Jensen does give me hope. He clearly points out that once we start valuing life over production, there will start to be change. Jensen also brings up another important point..."People are not fundamentally hateful. Our hate is not a result of several billion years of natural selection. It's a result of the framing conditions under which each of us are raised. It's a result of the unquestioned assumptions that inform us. If we want to stop that hate, we need to get rid of the framing conditions. Until we do that, we're bound to fail. So, yes, that is precisely my solution, we need to get rid of civilization." I don't think it can be put more plain than that.
I recommend The Culture of Make Believe, and A Language Older Than Words to anyone. They are amazing pieces of work!

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Summary: Who is this guy kidding?
Review: I'm all for putting this book in the same category as Herbert Marcuse's "Eros and Civilization," as one of the editorial reviews excerpted here suggests. Marcuse's book was used as the blueprint for the past 40 years for every variety of well-intentioned radical-left-wing drivel, and has if anything grown even more dated and problematic since.

"Culture of Make Believe" is not much better; it's basically one big jumble of factoids, aimless ranting, and unfocused indictments of everything vaguely "modern." It also plays fast and loose with its facts, and in so many places that the book is suspect.

An example, and far from an isolated one: One of the more commonly-exploited images used to describe modern life is the Nazi extermination camps of WWII -- as in, modern society is one, or the whole world has become one, or whatever sloppy shock metaphor you prefer. Putting aside how this is incredibly belittling of the actual atrocity of the Holocaust, there's also the problem of the lazy way the metaphor is used. Jensen writes about the Zyklon B that came from the showerheads in the gassing rooms -- when in fact the showerheads weren't attached to anything, and the gas was introduced into the room by other means. A small detail? Sure, but they add up, and they betray a level of unwillingness to do real research and to really think about the issues that he pretends to "confront" in this long-winded, flabby book.

Or he drops hints: Dioxin in polar bear fat! Wring your hands! What Jensen never tells us is how much, or when, or in what concentrations, or anything else that would make mentioning such a thing more than a cheap shock tactic. The book is riddled with such sleazy techniques.

I suspect most of the people who will be drawn to a book like this will not be all that concerned about the fulsome intellectual laziness that lies underneath the apparently committed skin of this writing. They will not look for well-reasoned arguments or careful conclusions. They will look for something that confirms their already-held prejudices about life, and which "challenges" them only in the most obvious and perfunctory ways.

Books like this annoy me, because while they are written with great passion, they preach to the choir -- and, worse, they do so with such a betrayal of their intentions that they become virtually unreadable.

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Summary: Eyes Wide Open
Review: If you read your morning newspaper, if you watch the nightly news, if you cruise the Internet, or if you only see the world as you commute to work each morning, it's easy to see that we live in a world full of problems. Vehicles pack our streets. Smog hangs in a thick blanket over our cities. Wildlife is scarce and often is seen by the urban commuter only as roadkill. If you're happy in your job, you're the exception. Most of us change jobs as often as we change residences, restless, constantly moving, looking for -- something. Violence seems to be as American as a chicken in every pot. It dominates the headlines and insinuates itself into our entertainment. Often, it can be found in our homes, and it's easy enough to see it on the streets, in the apparel and, more tellingly, in the eyes of our homeless. We buy and discard aluminum, plastic, and cardboard products as though the sources from which they are derived will never dry up. The person who drinks water from the tap is rare. Most filter it or avoid it altogether, choosing to purchase water in large bottles or small because, quite simply, we can't trust the water that bubbles underground. Why should we? We cover the land with pesticides and exhaust and effluents. We hide our trash underground. The crimes committed in the name of nuclear energy -- well, let's not even go there.

When I was young -- and this was not so long ago, the early 1960s -- I lived in a suburban town in Connecticut. I remember lying on my lawn in the spring and fall and watching flocks of birds numbering in the hundreds fly over my house. Within a half block there was a tiny bridge, and under the bridge flowed a brook that could almost be called a stream, especially in certain seasons. Frogs and snakes and minnows and, sometimes, tiny trout could be found in abundance in the clean, sparkling water. Just beneath the bridge, on the downstream side, the brook formed a small pond -- small in name only because, during the winter, it formed a sheet of ice large enough to skate upon. Beyond were huge fields that stretched for acres, one of them containing a steep hill that, during the winter, was perfect for sledding.

A couple of years ago, I returned to that town. The bridge is still there, but no water runs beneath it. None. Not a trace. No frogs, no snakes, no trout. The hills I played on are filled with houses, large ones, owned by the conspicuously wealthy.

And the birds -- well, just look in the sky. Look for a long, long time. Or don't. Perhaps you can recall without looking the last time you saw a flock of a hundred, or even a few dozen.

My point -- and I do have one -- is this: We all know these problems exist. We see them every day. We may not acknowledge them, but we see them. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say we are aware of their existence, but we don't see them, or at least don't acknowledge them. Perhaps it would be even more accurate to say that to acknowledge them, to see them, to open our eyes truly and comprehend precisely what is happening to our world -- not to us, to our world, of which we are only a small, some would say insignificant, part -- is simply too painful, too horrible. So we turn away. We close our eyes.

Derrick Jensen doesn't. In this, his newest book, he opens his eyes wide and takes a good look around. He sees clearly, more clearly than anyone I have ever encountered, so much so that I am afraid nothing I might write could do justice to what he has written, to the sacrifice he has made to create this powerful, all-encompassing treatise on the horror of western culture. Certain books should be required reading for the human race. Derrick Jensen writes these kinds of books.

This might not be enough for you. After all, a review is supposed to be a summation, a critique, not a story. Perhaps my approach is too personal. Perhaps I sound like a spoiled child who has become disillusioned. This is not the case. I still see magic in the night. I still see beauty in the wind moving the trees. The problem is I see less of this beauty every day. Tears fill my eyes as I write this. I wish I could say the solution was as simple as loving each other, loving the planet, but it isn't because the problems go much deeper than that. Or perhaps I should say the problem goes much deeper -- that we value production over all else. That the myriad, overwhelming issues from which we all turn away every day stem from the way we have been trained to see the world and everything in it, as objects for our use. Not subjects that are interconnected and interdependent, but living objects to be exploited and discarded. That every day we strive for nothing more than to turn the living, be it minerals, trees, animals, or human beings, into the dead.

If you read this book, I can't say you'll like it. If you read this book, I certainly can't say you'll agree with it. But read it. You must. If you profess to care about our children, read it. If you profess to care about your fellow beings, read it. If you profess to care about the environment, about the future, about history, wild things, the poor, the aged, the homeless, education, spirituality, the world -- if you profess to care about the multitude of problems facing the planet, read this book. For me -- I feel like I was blind, and now I can see.

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Summary: The Most Important Book You Can Read
Review: Looking around the world, what do we see? It depends on who we are. It depends on how we look, it depends on what we are able to see. In other words, what we see is predicated by a philosophical problem: seeing and reality are not analogous. During a class on Heidegger, I remember the professor saying to a dimwitted student who refused to understand Heidegger's work on language, under his breath, that you get what you deserve...i.e., you understand what you are able to understand given the limits of your relative cognizance of the world in its entirety--you are as limited (as Jensen would say) as the cultural blinkers you are wearing. Jensen's first book changed my life. This second book fulfills the promise of the first, that Jensen would outline a better world to replace the one he was criticizing. Here is the critique, and yet more help for readers to find another way of seeing things and with this new vantage point, a door that leads away from the destructiveness of our sham, crumbling civitas. The Culture of Make Believe is a culture where we do one thing and make-believe that we're doing something else entirely. Israel comes to mind: how many of us are willing to believe that the Israeli victimizers of the Palestinians are still victims themselves? Lots of us are. Why? Because we've been told, over and over--on the news, in books, in newspapers--that this is the case. This book is as important as Das Kapital. Like Marx's tome, it shows the world for something we'd been told, commanded to believe, it is not--a dangerous, immoral, desert of humanity bent on the destruction of all things including itself. Can the destruction be stopped? Yes, read this book.