↑ Listen to students at the Guadalajara Geopolitics Institute interview Morris Berman, author of Why America Failed, about the ideological wall that separates America and Mexico.
Berman explains that on the American side of this divide, we see the following:
- People living in a delusion that endless acquisition is not only possible, but desirable
- More than one massacre every day (4 or more people shot by someone)
- People going insane and getting violent over trivial incidents
- A persistent colonialist mindset toward people and natural resources
- River systems, water tables, and aquifers poisoned by fracking and pesticides
- People who don’t get emotionally connected to anyone, just use them as a stepping stone
- A way of life so alienating you need drugs just to get through the day
- A population that gets less literate every year
- A population that doesn’t want to hear any of this
Other topics covered
What used to be the American way of life? What is the “hustler” mentality? How will the American Empire transition? What does he think of people who deny the decline of American Empire? Why is the American Dream elusive or a lie? How should American leaders handle the decline of empire? How does Dr. Berman define traditional Mexican culture? What happens to Mexicans who go to the USA? Where is US influence felt most in Mexican society? How can people engage in making change and fighting injustice? Comments on McFarland, USA.
About the guest
Morris Berman is well known as an innovative cultural historian and social critic. He has taught at a number of universities in Europe and North America, and has held visiting endowed chairs at Incarnate Word College (San Antonio), the University of New Mexico, and Weber State University. During 1982-88 he was the Lansdowne Professor in the History of Science at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Berman won the Governor’s Writers Award for Washington State in 1990, the Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies in 1992, and the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity (from the Media Ecology Association) in 2013. He is the author of a trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness—The Reenchantment of the World (1981), Coming to Our Senses (1989), and Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality (2000)—and in 2000 his Twilight of American Culture was named a “Notable Book” by the New York Times Book Review. Dr. Berman relocated to Mexico in 2006, and during 2008-9 was a Visiting Professor at the Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico City.