The End of the World As We Know It

If the Philistines are at the gate of American culture, it’s on the inside.

We’re witnessing the end of an era, the twilight of American culture.

As a wise person once said, “America has become a storefront for a corporate mob.”

We are a culture of constant consumption, gluttons who mostly stuff ourselves with regurgitated entertainment devoid of anything meaningful or of lasting value. As social critic James Twitchell put it, “There is barely an empty space in our culture not already carrying commercial messages.”

So many things being sold to us. So much noise.

We live in a “systematic suppression of silence,” George Steiner said.

It’s the end of the world as we know it—and how do most of us feel? Just fine. At least we do as long as they keep us distracted, entertained, medicated, and consuming.

Morris Berman says in his book, “The Twilight of American Culture” that there are four factors present in the collapse of a civilization. Name one of them that doesn’t apply to us:

1) Accelerating social and economic inequality.
2) Declining marginal returns with regard to investment in organizational solutions to socioeconomic problems.
3) Rapidly dropping levels of literacy, critical understanding, and general intellectual awareness.
4) Spiritual death—the emptying out of cultural content and repackaging it into formulas.

In the same book, Berman writes, “We live in a collective adrenaline rush, a world of endless promotion/commercial bullshit that masks a deep systemic emptiness, the spiritual equivalent of asthma.”

Are we talking about the Roman Empire or the American one?

According to Sallust, Rome in 80 B.C.E. was a government controlled by wealth, a ruling-class numb to the repetitions of political scandal, and a public diverted by chariot races and gladiatorial shows.

Sounds like us to me. Our sickeningly greedy culture is of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations. Too many are numb to and ignorant of everything that truly matters. And we are a public diverted by NASCAR, sitcoms, reality TV, transient, trashy novels, trite, tiresome, retread movies, extremist political pundits, and the pathetic freak show parade of celebrity culture—and I’m not even talking about the too-easy targets of Palin and Paris, The Situation and the Octomom, and Bush and Beck.

We celebrate ignorance and inanity and incivility—and we like it loud and obnoxious and arrogant.

Are we Philistines? Read the definition and decide for yourself— a smug, ignorant, especially middle-class person who is regarded as being indifferent or antagonistic to artistic and cultural values.

The problem isn’t the occasional consumption of cultural crap. It’s the steady diet of it—it’s not knowing it’s crap.

You may wonder what’s made me so cheery, why a hopeful, glass-half-full-guy like me has suddenly become a sandwich-boarded sidewalk seer wildly and wide-eyedly proclaiming the end is nigh.

Easy. It’s my front-row seat to the apocalyptic end of art and culture, justice and compassion. But the reason I’m ranting about it right now is an incident that happened last week in (of all places) New York at a place known for enlightening events—the 92nd Street Y.

This particular event was a conversation between Steve Martin, the writer and actor, and Deborah Solomon, who writes a weekly interview column for “The New York Times Magazine.”

About halfway through their conversation, a Y representative handed Solomon a note asking her to talk more about Martin’s career in show business and less about the art world, the subject of his latest novel, “An Object of Beauty.”

The following day, the Y sent out an apology for the event and the promise of a refund.

“The Y never told me what they wanted,” Solomon said, adding that Martin, a longtime friend, had asked her to conduct the interview, and that she determined that a conversation focused on the art world and his book seemed most timely and interesting. “Frankly, you would think that an audience in New York, at the 92nd Street Y, would be interested in hearing about art and artists. I had no idea that the Y programmers wanted me to talk to Steve instead on what it’s like to host the Oscars or appear in “It’s Complicated” with Alec Baldwin. I think the Y, which is supposedly a champion of the arts, has behaved very crassly and is reinforcing the most philistine aspects of a culture that values celebrity and award shows over art.”

And I couldn’t agree more.

Entertain us or we’ll whine and want our money back. Make us laugh, not think!

But the event and the response it received points out part of the problem. Steve Martin, who happens to be a good writer and storyteller, is a celebrity. His novels most likely get published and read because he’s a movie star. It seems to me that the very thing that gets him published and reviewed and read (or at least purchased), namely celebrity, is the very thing that came back to bite him in this instance. Celebrity culture sycophants wanted to hear not about art and literature, but mindless movie star trivia.

Celebrity books are a bane for novelists like me. Rare is the day that goes by that I’m not working hard to become a better writer, but because like Emily, I’m nobody, who are you? I send my books out into the loud, crowded world armed with only reviews and word-of-mouth. Recently, I was doing a signing in Tampa at a Barnes and Noble, for which a very modest crowd showed up, when the manager told me that just a few days before, the store couldn’t hold the huge throng that turned out for Tori Spelling’s new book.

Who knew Tori Spelling wrote? Let alone had more than one book out?

How should it make me feel that Tori Spelling, Brittany Spears, and Justin Beiber’s books outsell mine? (By a lot!)

Serious literature, fine film, great art—all still exist, but are too often buried under the loud, crass, kitsch, shallow, hollow, derivative drivel of consumertainment. We’ve blurred the lines between news and entertainment, between art and entertainment, between what truly matters and what matters not at all, and it’s making us trivial, silly people.

We pay for diversion, to be distracted, to keep from truly being moved or inspired or challenged, to fill the void with noise to keep ourselves from meditating on our mortality, from the time and space and silence required for serious thinking and reading and contemplating and the crafting of soul. And we’re doing it everywhere—not just in tiny Deep South towns, but in New York City.

Will you join me in the revolution? Let’s start the avalanche. Just because poison is being served doesn’t mean we have to eat it. When’s the last time you challenged yourself with a work of art? How long has it been since you refused to be bought or distracted or mesmerized into moronity?

Today’s the day. Turn off the TV. Turn your back on the insulting 3D idiocy at the Cineplex. Close the contrivance and crass manipulation of hyper-commercial novels. No longer submit to the artless assault of shallow entertainment. And begin your search for works that challenge and inspire, provoke and nurture, educate and entertain.

What Sven Birkerts said applies to all great art: “If literature survives at all, it is as a retreat for those who refuse to assimilate to American mass culture.”

Refuse to assimilate today! Crack open a good book and join me in a revolution that feels like an inspiriting monastic retreat.