Some of my recent reading has been some very interesting material by Morris Berman, an author who is new to me and, I find that I have been missing something. His work is well-considered, well-sourced, and easier to read than most intellectual authors these days. Of particular interest is his book The Decline of American Culture, which mirrors the jeremiads of other authors who decry the decline of all that is decent. However, Berman’s book is not just another it’s-all-going-to-hell tale with the author’s brilliant escape clause at the very end.

I have to give him credit for a sober and sobering observation, which is that given an objective assessment of the state of the nation at this time (the book was written some years ago, but is probably more timely now than it was then), compared with the state of other major nation states and particularly empires that fell apart, the American Empire is indeed in a serious state of decline, and nothing is going to change that outcome. He points out, correctly, that there is no historical example of a major nation that has managed to pull back from the brink at such a late stage of disintegration.

This is not to say that he says that it’s all hopeless and we should just pack it in. Instead he looks at other ways in which what was best about a lost civilization was saved, particularly by the monastic communities that retained much of knowledge from the classical world and preserved it, even though in many cases they had no idea what they were saving. Berman speculates that conscientious individuals and small groups might consider what he calls the “monastic option.”  This is not creating monasteries or adopting a monastic lifestyle in order to preserve cultural treasures, (although he doesn’t exactly rule that out either) but through individual effort and initiative try to keep alive the gems of culture that is growing more and more rare.

Side note: If you think I’m exaggerating about cultural decline, try making an allusion to Shakespeare or Greek mythology in an average conversation and watch it grind to a halt.

Over the next few entries I’d like to spend more time thinking about this, and in particular exploring the way in which informal, loosely organized communities of thinkers and guerrilla scholars might pursue this, since I am afraid I agree with Berman that eventually, we will have to.