Review of Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (Nation Books, 2009).
This book is not a happy read. I did know the job was dangerous when I took it; Empire of Illusion is not a positive-sounding title. It speaks of something wrong. It doesn’t praise, it warns. The gist of Hedges’s message is that Americans have been largely diverted from literacy by what he calls spectacle: the replacement of words and ideas by images and mirages. In the previous literate society, people kept informed by reading books, newspapers, and magazines–that is, words–and they were not as easily influenced by images and spectacle. “Looks” didn’t mean so much, words and deeds were what mattered most. That reality, one of the great progressive developments of the modern era, is now endangered by the decline of literacy.
It’s not that there many people who can’t see a printed word and say it out loud, but that they either don’t read much or that they can no longer make sense out of what they do read. They rely instead on imagery, and not on even thoughtful imagery, but rather on that which shocks, or tittlates, or amuses, or otherwise aligns with one’s unexamined prejudices. The pervasiveness and seeming popularity of so-called “reality” shows on television is both a cause and a consequence of the abandonment of literacy.
Early in the book, Hedges reminds his readers of Plato’s “allegory of the cave” from The Republic. The allegory, told by Socrates in the dialogue, tells of the great mass of humanity who live deep inside a dark cave. They are chained to their seats such that they can see only a blank wall on which plays the shadows of otherwise unseen things moving behind them. For these people, this is the only “reality” they have known. They’ve never actually seen or examined what causes the shadows or their movement. The source of the dim light is unknown: it simply is. The shadows, blank and cartoon-like shapes, are easily grasped by intellects unaccustomed to anything more complex and detailed. All are content with this limited existence.
Until one day, one of them manages to break free and make his way out of the cave. At first, he is blinded by the bright sunlight. But as his eyes adjust, he is astounded by the world around him–its complexity, its diversity, its beauty. Looking back at the mouth of the cave he can see where the dim light and the shadows on the wall come from. He understands for the first time that they do not represent reality at all. They are nothing but shapes and movement, the random consequence of the real things that take place outside the cave in the bright light of day.
Most of today’s Americans, Hedges asserts, are, like Plato’s cave dwellers, chained and gaze, not at a cave wall but instead at a big-screen HDTV with its fast-moving colors, shapes, and sounds.
“The more we sever ourselves from a literate, print-based world, a world of complexity and nuance, a world of ideas, for one informed by comforting, reassuring images, fantasies, slogans, celebrities, and a lust for violence, the more destined we are to implode. . . . The worse reality becomes, the less a beleaguered population wants to hear about it, and the more it distracts itself with squalid pseudo-events of celebrity breakdowns, gossip, and trivia. These are the debauched revels of a dying civilization.“
See what I mean? Not a happy book, is it? Prove Hedges wrong: read it anyway!
Stay well, do good work, enjoy yourself.
Doc Carney