Too Much Magic
Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation
-
-
5.0 • 2 Ratings
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
The author of The Long Emergency explains why technology can’t solve all our problems, and how excessive optimism can endanger our future.
The Long Emergency quickly became a grassroots hit, offering a shocking vision of our post-oil future and capturing the attention of environmentalists and business leaders alike. As discussion about our dependence on fossil fuels and our dysfunctional financial and government institutions continues, the author returns with Too Much Magic—evaluating what has changed and what has not, and what direction we need to take in this post-financial-crisis world.
“Too much magic” is what James Howard Kunstler sees in the bright utopian visions of the future dreamed up by optimistic souls who believe technology will solve all our problems. Their visions remind him of the flying cars and robot maids that were the dominant images of the future in the 1950s. Kunstler’s image of the future is much more sober. With vision, clarity of thought, and a pragmatic worldview, Kunstler argues that the time for magical thinking and hoping for miracles is over—and the time to begin preparing for the long emergency has begun.
“A sharp critic of energy-sucking, big-box landscapes.” —Winnipeg Free Press
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With characteristic curmudgeonly enthusiasm, Kunstler brilliantly if belligerently shows us what a pickle we're in and how inept we are at dealing with it. As Kunstler writes: "Our lust for ever more comfort, pleasure, and distraction, our refusals to engage with the mandates of reality, our fidelity to the cults of technology and limitless growth, our narcissistic national exceptionalism all propel us toward the realm where souls abandon all hope." He offers astute critical histories of both political parties, narrating the Democrats' decline into "the party of nothing in particular," and how the fundamentalism of Southern "poor agricultural peasants" combined with car culture to create the right-wing "official party of stupidity." Equally disturbing, he proposes that our financial system may already be in permanent collapse, that the promise of natural gas abundance is based more on desperation for fossil fuel than reality, and that Mother Nature may be exacting revenge. Not surprisingly, his best-case vision for the future mirrors his unsettling 2008 novel World Made by Hand, complete with the end of feminism. Surprisingly, Kunstler concludes with homely advice worthy of a graduation speech: "Demonstrate to yourself that you are a competent person who can understand the signals that reality is sending to you... and act intelligently in response."
