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Title: The Middle Mind : Why Americans Don't Think for Themselves by Curtis White ISBN: 0-06-052436-7 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 14 August, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.31 (26 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: A great opportunity squandered
Comment: Reading "The Middle Mind" reminds me a bit of when I lived near a Univeristy of California campus and hung out with mostly PhD candidates. There would be moments of sheer brillance mixed in with a general soupy fog of academic lingo, rhetoric and, at times, arrogance.
Curtis White has a theory that makes a lot of sense. As a former director of a political non-profit charged with the task of mobilizing grassroots Americans I saw the "middle mind" at work on a daily basis. Very basic critiques of US governmental policy seemed incomprehensible to people who definitely had the intelligence to figure it all out. But many couldn't. Why? I think Curtis White has something here with this book. This is why I picked it up with such enthusiasm.
When you've got a great idea like White you're charged with two specific tasks. One, present the theory. Two, illustrate how this theory reflects reality by using specific examples.
It is in the examples that White gets bogged down.
I cheered when I read his critique of "Saving Private Ryan." Some of his arguments were the very same thoughts I had when I first saw the movie. The character of "Upham" the translator was a blatant attack on compassion, on intellectuals, and anything or anyone who doesn't follow the American way. Unfortunately, as White points out, very few people were able to "read" the movie and see these underlying messages.
Then White goes after college "Cultural Studies" programs. When you look at the book you get the idea that this is supposed by about why _most_ Americans have a middle mind. Concentrating on cultural studies reveals White's weak spot. He's an academic and, like many academics, he's been in his isolated world too much. As a lawyer once told me, "Don't worry, it's all a tempest in teapot." That describes perfectly the political turmoil on a lot of US college campuses. This is not to say that cultural studies hasn't had an impact. But to suggest that it deserves this much attention is just more ivory tower arrogance.
Another kind of mistake White makes is in picking less obvious targets like Terry Gross's "Fresh Air." Coming up with a theory can be a moment of genius. Going after an NPR radio personality who projects a smart and extremely pleasant demeanor is simply not a good way to endear potential believers in that theory. Even if White is correct about Gross, it's just not smart if you want people to actually believe in what you say. You turn them off because you've insulted someone they happen to think is a nice person.
Overall, I think White can't see the forest through the trees. The big picture here are the larger issues - politics, social movements, that sort of thing. A huge percentage of Americans have seen "Saving Private Ryan." That same huge percentage also tends to blindly support US foreign policy. There's a loose connection there and its important. Focusing on the micro culture of academic theory, however, has very little relation to the lives of everyday Americans. Any effect it has had is surely minimal.
If White had just stuck to more commonly shared American sources of information and culture such as "Saving Private Ryan" this book could have had a far more reaching impact.
I will give White credit, however, for being fairly impartial in aiming his criticisms. While he happens to like Zinn and Chomsky, he also attacks, for example, the New Age movement and political correctness. This is important because the middle mind, as I witnessed in my own experience working in politics, is not exclusive to a political ideology. Each side has certain weak spots. On the right you've got people who follow George W. Bush without question. On the other you've got leftists who blindly believe that Mumia Abu Jamal is as innocent as driven snow and anyone who says otherwise is a racist. Both mentalities depict a certain amount of intellectual laziness - a middle mind.
Overall, White has made the revolutionary act of describing the reality we live in. Americans don't think. How he went about doing this is a disappointing squandered opportunity.
Rating: 5
Summary: Brilliant, inspiring, enlightening
Comment: Curtis White puts in words the acute intellectual and moral struggle that to me represents life in America, something I as a European expat face every day here but can't express.
I could not put this book down. Considering it deals with some complex ideas of philosophy it is surprisingly readable.
I am buying it for everyone.
On my to-do list: read all the books mentioned in The Middle Mind, starting with Theodor Adorno's.
Curtis White is my new hero, after Chomsky.
Rating: 3
Summary: Worthwhile but mixed bag
Comment: Many arguements here need to be made, heard widely, and considered deeply. The cultural criticism and telling 'take' on various writers is thought provoking even if the style is sometimes not as direct as it could be. He does a better job of reviewing authors who mislead and may not "think for themselves" clearly than thouroughly living up to the subtitle about "why Americans (generally?)don't think for themselves".
Because the situation is deteriorating rapidly with multimedia replacing thoughtful reading; job training replacing liberal education; professional business/law win-at-all-costs replacing most ethics and humanism; and language itself losing cogency the topics he essays are critical indeed. White also, as ome example, has the guts to tell us the impolite reality that we enjoy the fruits of materialism at the expense of many disadvantaged in the world - directly at their expense more than we think. (The American child's problem is often obesity and boredom and attention deficit syndrome when nearly half the world lives on less than $2 a day and children are malnourished. Fact not liberal softheadedness.)
A worthy effort worth revision; the Truths herein deserve it.
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Title: Memories of My Father Watching TV by Curtis White ISBN: 1564781895 Publisher: Dalkey Archive Pr Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.50 |
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Title: The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars Which Altered Forever the Political Life of the American Republic 1890-1920 by Walter Karp, Lewis Lapham ISBN: 1879957558 Publisher: Moyer Bell Ltd Pub. Date: November, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Indispensable Enemies: The Politics of Misrule in America by Walter Karp, Lewis Lapham ISBN: 1879957132 Publisher: Franklin Square Pr Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Necessary Angel : Essays on Reality and the Imagination by Wallace Stevens ISBN: 0394702786 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 February, 1965 List Price(USD): $9.00 |
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Title: The Sorrows of Empire : Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic [The American Empire Project ] by Chalmers Johnson ISBN: 0805070044 Publisher: Metropolitan Books Pub. Date: 13 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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