I'd Like To Be a Serious Thinker But I Can't Afford It

As a business-book writer and editor, and, I like to think, a reasonably literate person, I was intrigued by the topic of this New York Times article by publisher Harriet Rubin about the libraries of CEOs. And early in the article, I liked Rubin's comment, "Serious leaders who are serious readers build personal libraries dedicated to how to think, not how to compete." I've known some CEOs like that, and they are interesting people to meet and talk with.

Unfortunately, Rubin followed up with this sentence: "Ken Lopez, a bookseller in Hadley, Mass., says it is impossible to put together a serious library on almost any subject for less than several hundred thousand dollars."

Wha--? Not only does this make no sense whatever, but it is totally contradictory to the actual concept of literacy in the post-Gutenberg era. The beauty of books is that they are mass produced. What's more, the greatest works of literature--the classics of centuries past--are mostly available in multiple cheap editions. So anyone who is actually serious about learning "how to think" can assemble a collection of literally priceless instruction for a few hundred dollars, simply by scouring used book stores for old paperback copies of Aristotle, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Mill, The Federalist Papers, Darwin, etc. etc.

Of course, as I read on, it became clear that what Rubin was writing about was not what one might call "working libraries" amassed by people who actually read and think but rather collections of rare books assembled for their investment value--which explains the remark about having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the stuff. Rubin goes on to illustrate:

Students of power should take note that C.E.O.'s are starting to collect books on climate change and global warming, not Al Gore's tomes but books from the 15th century about the weather, Egyptian droughts, even replicas of Sumerian tablets recording extraordinary changes in climate, according to John Windle, the owner of John Windle Antiquarian Booksellers in San Francisco.

Darwin's "Origin of Species" was priced at a few thousand dollars in the 1950s. "Then DNA became the scientific rage," said Mr. Windle. "Now copies are selling for $250,000. But the desire to own a piece of Darwin's mind is coming to an end. I have a customer who collects diaries of people of no importance at all. The entries say, 'It was 63 degrees and raining this morning.' Once the big boys amass libraries of weather patterns, everyone will want these works."

Well, it's certainly good to know that America's most powerful business leaders are finally grappling with global warming as a serious intellectual issue! And I'm sure those fifteenth-century weather treatises and Sumerian tablets shed a lot of light on the kind of carbon-emissions policies corporations ought to be developing. Having your consultant buy a medieval manuscript at Sotheby's is so much more practical and useful than reading one of those icky "tomes" by Al Gore, which any doofus can pick up in a bookstore for twenty bucks!

Obviously, there's nothing wrong with CEOs or other wealthy people collecting rare books. It's just as harmless as collecting duck decoys, Amish quilts, Impressionist paintings, or Greek vases. But it's mere vanity to dress the habit up in pretentious intellectual garb as if it reflects some sort of profundity, and this unfortunate article is another sad example of the Times's penchant for devoting its pages to stroking the egos of the rich and powerful.

Al Gore's "The Assault on Reason": Keep the Tom Paine, Lose the Mr. Wizard

I've finished reading Al Gore's new book The Assault on Reason. It's very forthright, opinionated, and passionate, far more so than any book that a declared candidate for office is likely to write.

Much of the book--most of chapters two through eight--is a detailed critique of the dishonest, anti-democratic, and quasi-totalitarian bent of the far right and in particular of the abuses that have been committed by the Bush administration in the name of "the war on terror." If you're a regular reader of the progressive blogosphere (or for that matter of Paul Krugman's columns in the New York Times), you'll find most of this material familiar (though no less appalling on that account).

More significant is the broader context in which Gore couches this critique--namely, his vision of a generalized "assault on reason" and on the principle of deliberative, consensual, representative democracy by groups that want to accumulate power for selfish or ideological ends and in so doing are threatening both the spirit and the substance of the U.S. Constitution. Gore faults not only the political players responsible (including the lobbying groups, astroturf organizations, and think tanks that promote the far-right agenda) but also the corporate media, which has permitted and even abetted the gradual hollowing-out of American democracy. If the trend continues, we'll be left with an empty shell in place of a once-vibrant government more or less responsive to the will of the people.

I basically agree with Gore on all of these points and am delighted to see him express them with such force and frankness. I'm less convinced, however, by the panoply of neurological, sociological, and psychological theories that he draws on to suggest that technological changes--especially the dominance of television as a communications medium--have made the dire trends he writes about all but inevitable. (This of course is the aspect of the book that David Brooks focused on in his recent effort to debunk Gore. Brooks fancies himself an expert on the social implications of brain functioning and evidently resents having someone else--a liberal Democrat, no less!--treading on his turf.)

Much as I dislike Brooks, however, I feel that Gore may have weakened his case by including this material, which dominates the 22-page introduction and the first chapter and is also scattered elsewhere throughout the book.

For one thing, I automatically become skeptical when I see a non-scientist citing scientific research in support of some political or social thesis. Global warming is one thing: It's quite apparent that there is an overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is altering the world's climate in ways that are likely to be unpredictable and probably dangerous. But is there a consensus among neuroscientists that watching TV "induces a quasi-hypnotic state . . . and creates an addiction to the constant stimulation of two areas of the brain: the amygdala and the hippocampus" and thereby weakens the viewer's ability to reason dispassionately? I don't know, and I would feel a little queasy if Gore's thesis relied on this and similar scientific arguments.

The fact is, however, that the scientific stuff is really unnecessary to Gore's points about the weakening of democracy. He could have stuck with certain arguments he makes that are practically uncontrovertible: that television is a passive, one-way medium that stifles many voices in favor of a powerful few; that the reliance of political campaigns on costly TV ads gives moneyed groups too much influence over outcomes; and that as a result of these two forces, individual citizens have steadily diminishing power to control their lives and the government that supposedly represents them.

Mind you, David Brooks's criticism of Gore's book as proposing some kind of "Vulcan Utopia" based on a worldview that is "chilly" and "sterile" is just plain wrong. Page after page of The Assault on Reason consists of frank, scathing accounts of some of the horrific actions of the Bush administration coupled with withering quotations warning against and denouncing just such tyrannical abuses from the likes of Jefferson, Hamilton, Lincoln, and Tom Paine. Overall, Gore's tone comes across as no less impassioned (and no more "chilly" or "sterile") than The Federalist Papers, Common Sense, or the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

But from a rhetorical standpoint, Gore may have erred in giving his inner nerd a little too much freedom to expatiate about the latest "cool" science in the very first pages of his book. I'm not sure how many converts those passages will win--and I'm afraid they may turn off a few who'd otherwise find his arguments compelling.