How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse
September 22, 2003
Easterbrook sees a widespread case of cognitive dissonance in the West: according to Easterbrook, though the typical American's real income has doubled in the past 50 years, the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as "happy" remains where it was half a century ago (oddly, Easterbrook doesn't tell us what that percentage is). Why do so many of us remain discontented, he asks? Is it because now that even the middle classes can afford nearly every conceivable luxury, we have nothing left to look forward to? Easterbrook, a senior editor at the New Republic and contributing editor to the Atlantic, believes so. He also castigates modern psychology and the media for dwelling on minor problems without celebrating the broader, more upbeat context in which they exist. But his endless nagging about how Americans and Western Europeans should be more grateful for their standard of living leads him to overcompensate: for instance, he minimizes the harm done to Wal-Mart employees who were forced to work "off the clock" hours without pay because, after all, they're still living better than their ancestors, since stores like Wal-Mart sell necessities at such affordable prices. The book does confront some serious problems, like the health-care crisis, but suggests that they can be licked as effectively as we've fixed environmental, racial and other seemingly intractable problems. Sarcastic patter and a flair for catchphrases like "abundance denial" and "wealth porn," however, barely disguise a padded thesis—and one easily argued against with an alternative set of statistics. Agent, Carlisle & Co.
November 17, 2003
Religion scholar Glucklich (Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul
) presents 30 ancient Hindu folktales, slotting them into the contrived story of an unnamed American biologist in South India. While walking barefoot near the sacred site of Chamundi Hill (simply because he wants to dry his wet sneakers), the narrator meets P.K. Shivaram, a retired librarian, who mistakes the biologist for a pilgrim and takes pity on his tender foreign feet. As they approach the 1,001 steps leading to a 12th-century Chamundi temple, the "tiny wrinkled man in brown polyester pants and worn out rubber thongs" distracts the biologist from his aching feet by telling him pilgrimage stories. The rather preachy riddles and fables, some of which are translated from Sanskrit for the first time, feature casts of kings, demons and talking animals and deliver pat moral lessons. The narrator and librarian dissect each tale on a metaphorical journey to Nirvana—a technique that feels irksomely artificial—and Glucklich dumbs down his American narrator (says the narrator to his guide: "First Shiva, now Vishnu—you know, I never could figure out your complicated polytheism"). In a few instances, Glucklich presents meaningful reflections: "No event in your life is a simple objective fact. It always means something to the memory-processing mind." Still, the flashes of substance feel isolated within a narrative that struggles to reach enlightenment.