Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph

of Spectacle – Book Review

covenanteyes.com/2011/05/06/empire-of-illusion-the-end-of-literacy-and-the-triumph-of-spectacle-book-review/

by Guest Author May 6, 2011 | 7 min May 6, 2011

by Brian Gardner
Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle , by Pulitzer Prize
winning author Chris Hedges, argues that we are heading for economic, environmental,
political, and moral collapse, as a once proud nation becomes an empire. According to
Hedges, corporations are using mass entertainment to sell us the illusion of meaning, while
we are kept apathetic about the decline of our culture, the erosion of education, and the
systematic loss of our liberties.

This review will start with a synopsis of the book, and I’ll draw some conclusions at the
end.

Chapter by chapter
In Chapter 1, “The Illusion of Literacy,” beginning with the popular appeal of professional
wrestling and reality TV, the author traces how media creates illusions of life, or pseudo-
events, which overlay reality in the minds of those who follow them. These pseudo-events
become more important than our real-world problems. “The success of professional
wrestling, like most of the entertainment that envelops our culture, lies not in fooling us
that these stories are real. Rather, it succeeds because we ask to be fooled. We happily pay
for the chance to suspend reality.”

Moving through an detailed panorama of media, the cult of celebrity, and shows like
American Idol, The Swan, Big Brother, and Survivor, Hedges uncovers the messages behind
these shows. “They leave us chasing vapors. They urge us toward a life of narcissistic self-
absorption. They tell us that existence is to be centered on the practices and desires of the
self rather than the common good.”

This assaults literacy, not just our ability to read, but also our capacity to think deeply about
issues.

A culture dominated by images and slogans seduces those that are functionally literate but
who make the choice not to read…Propaganda has become a substitute for ideas and
ideals. Knowledge is confused with how we are made to feel. Commercial brands are
mistaken for expressions of individuality.

This is most important in the area of politics.

Those captive to images cast ballots based on how candidates make them feel. They vote
for a slogan, a smile, perceived sincerity, and attractiveness, along with the carefully
crafted personal history of the candidate…Truth is irrelevant. Those who succeed in
politics, as in most of the culture, are those create the most convincing fantasies.
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In chapter 2, “The Illusion of Love,” Hedges addresses the issue of the growing use of
pornography in the last 40 years. He shows the horrors of the porn industry, its abuse of
women and the industrialization of rape. He allows porn actors to speak for themselves,
focusing on those who share their victimization by soulless companies whose only concern
is profit; in porn they are commodities, not people. Hedges pulls no punches in letting them
tell their stories. The testimonies here are stark and sexually detailed, certainly not for the
faint-hearted. In other interviews with people who support the industry you can hear the
hollowness of their justifications of abuse and torture.

He has a section of interviews with Shelly Lubben and some of her team at a porn
convention. Shelly is an ex-porn star and is now a Christian crusader against the industry.
Her mission is to rescue women from porn and show them the gospel of Jesus Christ. The
author never openly commends her work against the industry, though he seems to share
her viewpoint. Hedges does not write from a Christian perspective, and given his other
railing against Christians (especially the “Christian Right”) this is a compliment.

There are few conclusions or recommendations for how to deal with this scourge on the
mental landscape of our citizens. Instead, the author leaves us to draw our own from the
descriptions of how pornography victimizes both users and producers. He rightly sees
pornography as disassociated from relationships, intimacy, and real sex, and more about
power and violence. Hedges uses our cultures fascination with porn, and the way that it
has become mainstreamed into other media, to show how we have replaced real love with
an illusion. Porn is a reflection of the violence that we have come to accept as
entertainment, as figured in the Abu Graib abuses.

Chapter 3, “The Illusion of Wisdom,” is about higher education, specifically the schools of
the elite, like Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and Cambridge—the very schools where most of those
in political and corporate power receive their education. Admission to these schools, like a
country club membership, is only available to the rich and powerful, who make colossal
donations to gain admittance for their children. Diversity is cultural and ethnic, but there is
no diversity of class. Intelligence and analytical skills are the only traits prized in these
cloisters of privilege, and those students and faculty who question the status quo are
shunned. Hedges contrasts this to an earlier time when enrollment was open, and where
students questioned what they were hearing, rather than simply regurgitating facts.

He notes,

These elites are not capable of asking the broad, universal questions, the staples of an
education in the humanities, which challenge the deepest assumptions of a culture and
examine the harsh realities of political and economic power…Instead the elite are taught
skills which prepare them for careers in business and politics. If business and political
institutions are going the wrong way, these skills will not enable them to see what is wrong,
or show any way to correct them…The unstated ethic of these elite institutions is to make
as much money as you can to sustain the elitist system…By the time they graduate, they
are superbly conditioned for the drudgery of moving large sums of money around
electronically or negotiating huge corporate contracts.

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The consequence of this shift in education over the last 100 years is that the people
making the biggest decisions about what kind of country and economy the rest of us will
inherit are those unprepared to question authority and the status quo, and unlikely to set
aside the interests of the rich and powerful to build a better world for all Americans. The
moral and ethical dimensions of business and public policy will not just be ignored, but
intellectually unavailable to them.

Chapter 4, “The Illusion of Happiness,” is about positive psychology and social

engineering. Positive psychology believes that happiness can be engineered. “By thinking
about things, by visualizing them, by wanting them, we can make them happen.” As
preposterous as this con artistry seems, this is a prevailing philosophy being sold to major
corporations. “The corporations tell us who we are and what we can become…If we are not
happy there is something wrong with us.”

This ties in with the picture that Hedges is painting of our culture of illusion.

Once we adopt a positive mind, positive things will always happen. This belief, like all the
other illusions peddled in the culture, encourages people to flee from reality when reality is
frightening or depressing… This flight into self-delusion is no more helpful in solving real
problems than alchemy. But it is very effective in keeping people from questioning the
structure around them that are responsible for their misery. Positive Psychology gives an
academic patina to fantasy.

These positive psychologists sell their services to corporations, who then build a culture
where productivity at work, based on an illusion of happiness, not family or church,
becomes the highest ethical goal for an individual. As this fails to produce real fulfillment
and leads to isolation, the person who rebels against his keepers is passed over for
promotion, or “downsized.” The person who is cowed into submission flees into the fantasy
of spectacle on television or pornography to validate a life that should have been lived for a
higher calling than next year’s annual report. Either way this accomplishes the corporation’s
goal of profit, either by producing more brake pads, or downsizing those who don’t want to
play the game.

Positive psychology, like celebrity culture, the relentless drive to consume, and the
diversionary appeals of mass entertainment, feeds off the unhappiness that comes from
isolation and the loss of community. The corporate teaching that we can find happiness
through conformity to corporate culture is a cruel trick, for it is corporate culture that
stokes and feeds the great malaise and disconnect of the culture of illusion.

The final chapter, “The Illusion of America,” sums up the rest of the book with the opening
line, “I used to live in a country called America.” Hedges tells us that, though we use the
same language of freedom, rights, liberty, and justice for all, we are left with only the
illusion of these things in a country that cruelly treats those who are poor, laid off, and
whose homes have been foreclosed, while those who have engineered their demise on Wall
Street take home 10 million dollar bonuses. Ironically, the government we elected to
promote liberty and to protect our people never steps in to interrupt this greed. There are

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slogans of hope and change, but the real hope is for the rich to get richer, and the change is
just another coat of paint on the same collapsing edifice that was once a great and proud
nation.

I challenge you to read that chapter for yourself. It’s not fun. Whether or not all that Chris
Hedges says is true, there is certainly the ring of authenticity to someone born in the early
50s who grew up looking forward to a brighter future and a better America. Perhaps the
most chilling statement is, “At no period in American history has our democracy been in
such peril or the possibility of totalitarianism as real.” In the 70s I wondered, as I read
Revelation 13, how the prediction of an evil world ruler could ever be bought and sold in
America. Francis Schaeffer’s words were prophetic: “History indicates that that at a certain
point of economic breakdown people cease being concerned with individual liberties and
are ready to accept regimentation. The danger is obviously greater when [the] two main
values so many people have are personal peace and affluence.”

The time is short

The Bible tells us that things will go from bad to worse, that “people’s love will grow cold,”
that rather than following the radical truth of the Bible “they will accumulate for themselves
teachers according to their own desires, wanting to have their ears tickled.” While they are
shouting their favorite slogan—“peace and safety”—destruction will come upon the system
that Satan has engineered, and Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island will sink into the ocean of God’s
judgment.

In the movie, The Matrix, the character dubbed Morpheus tells Neo, “The Matrix is…the
world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” That’s what Satan’s
kingdom is. What the Bible calls the kosmos, the world system, is the topic of The Empire of
Illusion. It’s a worthwhile book, because it reminds us, “this world is passing away, and also
its lusts.”

The question for the follower of Jesus is this: as our country and our world are propelled
toward the final destruction of Satan’s kingdom, how invested in it will we be? Will the
church be living lives of radical devotion to the kingdom of God, to love and fellowship, to
good deeds that adorn the gospel, to the preaching of the gospel of Jesus to every nation
and tribe, or will we be cheering on the next contestant on American Idol, playing our video
games, watching our porn, while those Christ died for perish in the house next door. Empire
of Illusion reminded me of how short the time is.

....

Brian Gardner leads the Sexual Integrity ministry at Xenos Christian Fellowship. By day, he
works as a software developer; the rest of the time he leads a college home group, teaches
classes on pornography addiction for men, does pastoral counseling, and tries to find time
once in a while to play some golf. Brian has been married for almost 35 years and is the
proud father of two grown kids (and grandfather to one grandson). His blog is “Bought with
a Price” found at BrianGardner.org.

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