Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us by Gary Saul Morson

Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us Reviews

• 
  Drtaxsacto

  This is the most profound and challenging book I have read in the last few years. The authors, one of whom I met when I was at USC, make the case that we face a new group of fundamentalists in at least four areas - Literature, Religion, Economics and Politics - who are unwilling and unable to engage substantively in those areas with people with whom they disagree. They argue that fundamentalism is "utopian if not apocalyptic. One knows the truth and those who disagree are ignorant, evil or insane. All goodness belongs to one's own camp." At the heart of fundamentalist belief (which is not demarcated by either left or right) is righteous indignation which hates the other side and wants to destroy it.
  
  In each of the areas they present some interesting reflections about the problem in that area. In the end since our system is based on compromise, and the fundamentalists abhor that, we risk losing the essence of our social and political systems.
  
  I am likely to revisit this book to think about the implications of both how they describe what I think is a very real problem and their preliminary suggestions for how to move away from this challenge.
• 
  Edward Sullivan

  A timely, necessary, incisive study of the rise of anti-intellectual dogmatism in religion, politics, science, literature, and economics and the peril it poses to the foundations of an open, democratic society upon reason, thoughtfulness, and a willingness to compromise to survive and thrive.
• 
  Mark

  Until I hit Chapter 5, I was all set to give this book top marks. Having finished the book, I do not understand why Chapter 5 was included at all. It is a massive digression from the general message being told, 50 or so pages of "akshually, (Jewish and Christian) scripture is good."
  
  On the one hand, I am a firm "non-believer". On the other hand, I would agree that traditional religious texts do have valuable stories to tell us, may well constitute "great literature", and, if Richard Dawkins is to be believed, even contain beautiful poetry.
  
  I feel strongly that I need to re-read Chapter 5, maybe even the entire book. That chapter seems so far off the beaten path of the first four chapters that I have to have missed something obvious and important along the way.
  
  Thankfully, Chapter 6 returns to the original thread established in the first four chapters.
• 
  Bobbie

  A look at how the rigid adherence to ideological thinking on both the "left" and the "right" has altered politics, economics, religion, and literature in ways that threaten democratic societies, which require dialogue, open-mindedness and compromise in order to function and thrive.
  
  I likely would have gotten more out of it if I were more familiar with the classic literature that is quoted and referred to so often in this book.
• 
  Jerrid Kruse

  A needed book illustrating how fundamentalism rooted in certainty of one’s own beliefs and ignoring complexity and other perspectives is creating severe problems in society. Both right and left-leaning people are likely to find things they disagree with and agree with - which illustrates this is an us problem not a them problem.
• 
  Jovany Agathe

  Minds Wide Shut by Gary Saul Morson and Morton O Schapiro, a sweeping study of the rise of rigid certainty in politics, economics and literature, and the threat it presents to democracy, which requires open-mindedness and compromise.
• 
  Michael

  Can we make this required reading for being a human?
• 
  Sveta

  G.S. Morson is a brilliant and deep thinker, especially when he's writing about Tolstoy, which is why I picked up this text. I've just begun, and I'm bewildered that it's such a disappointment.
  
  The first chapters, ostensibly intended to identify and define fundamentalism, seem more concerned with arguing against Marxism (?) and the authors seem to think they've ably done so NOT by tackling Marx's critique of how capitalist markets work (the strongest aspect of the theory -- which is what they say good faith arguments ought to focus on) but instead by targeting dialectical materialism. First, Marx's critique of capitalism stands up just fine without it, but even if it didn't, the authors seem to think they've kicked out the legs from dialectical materialism by dedicating two paragraphs to pointing out that it's 'odd' because, after all, 'How can materialism be "dialectic," when "dialectic" refers to forms of human argumentation?'. Voila, Marxist theory disproven.
  
  Well... not if you ask Hegel, from whom the Marxist approach to dialectic derives and for whom historical change is dialectical, with the most significant movement being the negation of the negation -- when history swings against its last major swing to restore order, so to speak. Of course, I'm not suggesting that Hegel would have endorsed Marxism, just pointing out that, for him, the dialectic shapes historical movement itself and isn't simply or solely a way of 'arguing.' Alas, Hegel's weighty view of history - and that of Marx - cannot be either so neatly or so swiftly dismissed. This is neither careful nor thoughtful reasoning, and Hegelianism deserves better than the reductive label of 'utopian.' Also, the book's constant presentation of Soviet hardliners as equivalents, representatives, or substitutes for Marxist thought is simply misleading, as is not even bothering to account for why Marxism might have been either important or appealing in the first place to generations of activists and thinkers, from Benjamin to Sartre to Adolph Reed.
  
  Then again, one of the authors honestly admits that there's 'nothing' that can move him to even consider 'an alternative to markets as a way to allocate scarce resources'. One wants to ask, wow, really, *nothing*? Your mind is that wide shut? Even when markets prioritize the wellbeing of capital and its managers over the lives of millions of people (example: pharmaceutical companies fund research into rare diseases in wealthy countries over widespread tropical diseases that kill millions - why? Because those medications make more money. What about market forces that encourage funding wars? Is that a fair way to allocate resources)? But the authors don't bother facing the difficult (and apparently Marxist?) questions that might present a challenge to a centrist status quo. When they remark that the fundamentalist mindset is characterized by 'A special note of disdain for the unenlightened fools who have not yet come around' I really wondered if it was intended to be a veiled self-reference...
  
  But Marxism is as 'fundamentalist' as any theory insofar as it seeks to unify diverse phenomena within a coherent framework and defends its position by means of largely one-sided arguments. That would include everything from Plato's theory of forms to trickle down economics to Leibniz' monads to feminist critiques of evolutionary psychology to Foucault's descriptions of power to Graham Harman's object oriented ontology to... you get the point. At least, it isn't clear to me why Marxism would be more fundamentalist than other philosophical theories.
  
  Maybe the authors mean to imply that only those theories that don't centralise reason are fundamentalist? I don't know what would 'count' in such a case. Is Kantian aesthetic fundamentalist because it posits that aesthetic beauty is purposeless, and is therefore beyond the purview of rational explanation? Is Kierkegaard's leap of faith fundamentalist because it relinquishes reason? Is Tolstoy's fiction fundamentalist in his final years because his version of Christianity, which has become unshakeable, wholly informs his writing?
  
  For instance, the authors argue that Erasmus is, unlike Luther, not fundamentalist because the former is a measured, skeptical humanist while the latter is a fiery and fully committed revolutionary. Okay, agreed. But they fail to consider that, sometimes, we need those who are willing to risk everything for the sake of nailing theses to doors. A consideration of virtue ethics would've served well, here.
  
  Still, the examinations of fanaticism and radical relativism are insightful and benefit from regular references to literary texts - one of Morson's many many virtues is his reliance on literature as a source of knowledge. As a guide to ethical thought, he's one of the indispensable critics.