Author: Susan Jacoby
Sunday, March 30, at 8:00 PM
Monday, March 31, at 7:00 AM
In "The Age of American Unreason," Susan Jacoby claims that American culture has become anti-intellectual and anti-rational. She contends that society has become unwilling to listen to contradictory viewpoints and learn from cultural opponents and the result could have destructive consequences. Ms. Jacoby points to the dumbing down of language, the impact of the media, and an age of celebrity worship as contributing to this mindset and says that society needs to be more self-aware if it is ever to change. This event took place at the Philadelphia Free Library.
Susan Jacoby is the author of seven other books, including "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism" and "Half-Jew: A Daughter's Search for Her Family's Buried Past."
http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=9180&SectionName=&PlayMedia=NoFrom The New Yorker
Identifying herself as a "cultural conservationist" (but by no means a cultural conservative), Jacoby laments the decline of middlebrow American culture and presents a cogent defense of intellectualism. America, she believes, faces a "crisis of memory and knowledge," in which anti-intellectualism is not only tolerated but celebrated by those in politics and the media to whom we are all "just folks." The Internet, for all its promise, is too often "a highway to the far-flung regions of junk thought." Meanwhile, twenty-five per cent of high-school biology teachers believe that human beings and dinosaurs shared the earth, and more than a third of Americans can’t name a single First Amendment right. In such an environment, Jacoby argues, the secular left and the religious right can have no fruitful dialogue on issues like the separation of church and state. She offers little hope that the situation will improve, opining that, despite increasing levels of education, "Americans seem to know less and less."
http://www.amazon.com/Age-American-Unreason-Susan-Jacoby/dp/0375423745