The Inability Of People To Master The Complexity Of The World - Trying To Start A Conversation About Evil Geniuses

 I want to post about Kurt Anderson's Evil Geniuses, which I got from my local library the other day, at the recommendation of Kathy in Kentucky in response to a post I did about how Sheldon Whitehouse used part of his confirmation hearing time to step back and offer some of the forces that are the context of this most recent Supreme Court nominee hearings.  (Thanks Kathy.)

I'm not far into the book.  I'm not even out of the Roman numeral numbered pages yet.  But it's clear that this is one of those books that attempts to explain the bigger economic and political forces at work in the world today.  

We shouldn't feel too bad if this is all new, because only a few people in any society are focused on seeing path the stories and myths that shape a culture while it is actually happening.  And it's not always easy to have access to forces that are working in the shadows.  

But as I thought about what I meant newly understand as I embark on reading this book, I realized that relatively few people actually carefully read long non-fiction work that explains how society really works.  

I think about the simplistic soundbite slogans that are being thrown around in lieu of serious debate. People aren't seeking knowledge and enlightenment, they are seeking only to cement their power, or their perceived power.  But, of course, 'they' lumps everyone together and hides the variety of levels of expertise, knowledge, and understanding of different phenomena that affect our lives.  Even the most educated, who know some area in spectacular detail, can be ignorant of most of the rest of the world.  

So I don't know how our society can best reestablish any sense of good will and trust.  But I do think, based on what I've read so far, that this book offers a much broader view of how the United States has shifted over the last 60 years or so.

I'm not sure how much of this book I can engage here on this blog, but let's at least start with the Table of Contents.  

I used to ask my beginning graduate students in public administration, what they thought we were going to study.  I'd warn them that most of the articles and books we'd read would only be interesting if they were asking the questions that the book answers.  That these works weren't like fiction or even newspaper articles.  In those genres you generally know all the concepts the words represent.  You generally know the basic narratives.  It's just that the specific characters and specific actions and locations change.  But you know all the words.  You know "a man"  "murders" and such words.  But in more academic work, you come up against words and concepts you may not already know.  Or, even more dangerous, you know them in a popular sense, but not in a specifically defined academic sense. 

So one exercise I'd run the students through on the first night was this:

Step 1:  If you were writing a textbook on public administration, what would be your main chapters?

Step 2:  I'd give them time to write out chapter titles, 

Step 3:  We'd share some on the board.  

Step 4:  I'd then read the chapter titles.  

And I'd tease them.  "If your friend had told you before class that the professor would read you the chapter titles and you would all be listening carefully, you would have thought your friend crazy.  If I give you the answers to a crossword puzzle you haven't worked on, it has no meaning.  But after you've struggled with the puzzle, the answers suddenly are very meaningful.  And that's what we've just done.  And I recommend you do similar exercises with everything you read this semester."

So, readers, get out a pen and paper or an empty file and keyboard and write down the chapters you'd write about if you were writing a book called Evil Geniuses:  The Unmaking of America, A Recent History.

I know most of you want to skip the exercise.  Life's too busy.  But if you actually got this far, let me urge you to look away from here and take five minutes to think about the topic and what chapters you might write.  The point is not to see if you can get close to Kurt Anderson's actual titles, but to tap into your own thoughts before you compare them to his. He has 22 chapters

via GIPHY

[The GIF is only ten seconds.  I couldn't quickly find one that goes for five minutes.  Sorry.]

OK, now that you have your chapter titles go through Anderson's table of contents.  For some of you this will make a lot of sense - and you'll have a good idea of where he's going with this book.  Others will also think it makes sense, but their sense will take them in a very different direction from Anderson.  For others it will be mystifying.  But you know other things.  

I hope to post more from this book because:

• I'm hoping it's as good as it looks it will be
• Writing about what I'm reading helps me understand and and remember it
• Relatively few people actually read books like this so I can help others who won't get to read it learn what's in it
• And some of you might be moved to get your own copy to actually read
• If it's as good as I hope  (good here meaning helping to explain the forces that have gotten us to October 2020 in the US and the world)
• Because knowing how something works gives you a chance to be able to fix it in a more nuanced way than just bashing it

Kurt Anderson:  Evil Geniuses:  The Unmaking of America, A Recent History (2020)

PART ONE:  A BRIEF HISTORY OF AMERICA

1.  Land of the New:  America from 1600 to 1865

2.  Land of the New:  An Economic History, from the 1770’s to the 1970s

3.  Approaching Peak New:  The 1960s

PART TWO:  TURNING POINT

4    The 1970s:  An Equal and Opposite Reaction

5.  The 1970s:  Liberalism Peaks and the Counterrevolution Begins

6.  The 1970s:  Building the Counter-Establishment

7.  The 1970s:  From a Bicentennial Pageant to a Presidency

8.  The 1970s:  Neoliberal Useful Idiots

PART THREE:  WRONG TURN

9.  The Reagan Revolution

10. Raw Deal:  What happened in the 1980s Didn’t Stay in the 1980s

11. The Rule of Law

12.  The Deregulation Generation

13.  The Culture of Greed Is Good

14.  How Wall Sweet Ate America 

15. Workers of the New World, You Lose

16.  Insecurity Is a Feature, Not a Bug

17.  Socially Liberal, Fisally Conservative, Generally Complacent

18.  The Permanent Reagan Revolution

19.  The 1990s:  Restrained and Reckless

PART FOUR:  SAME OLD SAME OLD

20.  Rewind, Pause, Stop:  The End of the New

21.  The Politics of Nostalgia and Stagnation Since the 1990s

22.  Ruthless Beats Reasonable

23.  Winners and Losers in the Class War

24.  American Exceptionalism

PART FIVE:  MAKE AMERICA NEW AGAIN

25.  Winners and Losers (So Far) in the Digital Revolution

26.  How the Future Will Work

27.  This Strategic Inflection Point

28.  What Is to Be Done?

29.  The Plague Year and Beyond

Hope to share more of this in the coming weeks.