LOCAL EVENTS-WINNIPEG:

EMPIRE OF ILLUSION:

It's happening in two weeks down at the Rudolf Rocker Cultural Centre, 91 Albert St., here in Winnipeg. A book launch for 'Empire of Illusion' by Chris Hedges. Here's the promo.

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Chris Hedges "Empire of Illusion" Book Launch:

Pulitzer Prize winning author launches his latest.
Host:
Mondragon
Date:
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Time:
7:30pm - 9:30pm
Location:
Rudolph Rocker Cultural Centre
3rd Floor of 91 Albert St.
Winnipeg, MB
Phone:
204-799-2901
Email:
mondragon@mondragon.ca
Description
Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of classics such as War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning and American Fascists, launches his latest book, EMPIRE OF ILLUSION.

In EMPIRE OF ILLUSION: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Chris Hedges examines the rift between these two cultures. He posits that our culture has detached from intellectualism, instead relying on spectacle, false idols, and snake oil salesmen to distract us from the economic, political and moral collapse around us. From the ring of professional wrestling matches at Madison Square Garden, to the convention floor in Las Vegas for the pornography industry’s annual Adult Video News (AVN) expo, to academic conferences where positive psychologists claim to be able to engineer happiness, he investigates the distractions and diversions that keep so many blissfully blind to reality. EMPIRE OF ILLUSION is a disturbing anatomy of a society unmoored from reality; one that has let literacy and critical thinking erode and allowed a new wave of celebrity, slogans, and illusion to overtake our autonomy.

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MOLLY NOTE

I sincerely hope that the author mentioned above will be more objective than the usual run of leftist "intellectuals". There is little doubt that our society, and that of most (all ?) societies in the world operate very much on the level of illusion and what has been called 'the spectacle'. That is granted. The problem is that the average leftist critic now operates at a much greater level of illusion than the general society does. Not only is there not even a grudging admission about how little the average person takes the spectacle "seriously". What is worse is that far too much of 'the left' wallows in a swamp of guilt and anti-intellectualism ((in the sense that they are against any effort to think things out beyond taking sides) that would put Sarah Palin to shame. Quite frankly before I will take any leftist critic seriously I would like to see the fans of TV wrestling put above the fans of fads such as post-modernism if for no other reason that that the wrestling fans are both more realistic and have a sense of humour. This may be too much to expect, but attend the lecture to see what this guy has to say. For myself, all that I can say is that a society of illusion inevitably begets its own illusionary opposition.