"As usual this imaginative philosopher-poet-bard is frying big fish."
- Utne Reader
Oh those innocent pleasures - McDLT, Coke, Doritos, Disneyland! If only they began and ended with the couple of bucks you put out for them. But take these purchases to the logical extreme and what do you get? A fake world - more charitably, a man-made world where, says philosopher William Irwin Thompson, "history is replaced with movies, education is replaced with entertainment and nature is replaced with technology."
Yet, Thompson argues with irony and amazement, this might be our salvation. Where some see the life-threatening problems of the Industrial Age - pollution, fragmented communities, chaos, and unreality - Thompson sees dramatic signs of the evolution - and survival - of our species. What emerges from this new book is an analysis that will redefine consumer culture for business readers and observers of the social scene alike.
This is a guilt-free essay on both the horror and wonder of our greatest work: consumption. No book provides greater insight into the evolving nature of the American consumer, who in the last century wanted perfect products and the coming century will want a perfect self (via genetic tinkering and mood-altering foods) and perfect experiences (via entertainment centers like Disney World and the West Edmonton Mall, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence).
Thompson shows us how corporations package the new "commodities" such as time (we want what seems eternal), space (the beauty of nature combined with the no-pain maintenance of man-made materials), and sound (the most efficient "selling" medium of all).
All of this is put into the perspective of economic evolution. We have "little chance of getting out of this century with the same human nature with which we entered it," Thompson writes. With basic survival needs satisfied, we now search for eternity and perfect beauty not through the faith and philosophy of our forefathers, but through bioengineering and wide-screen, surround-sound movies. This is a subject in which everyone is implicated, everyone involved. As only a writer and thinker of Thompson's caliber can make clear, the future of our economy and our character is written daily in these "small" purchases.
William Irwin Thompson is the Lindisfarne Scholar of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. He has taught in various departments of the humanities and social sciences at Cornell, MIT, York, Syracuse, the University of Hawaii, and the University of Toronto. Since 1967 he has published fourteen books, one of which, At the Edge of History, was nominated for the National Book Award.
"The joy is watching Thompson perform...His freewheeling through a vast cognitive terrain...can be exhilarating.
- San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle
