After many hours reading, reviewing,
and contemplating Consumed, I have
come to the conclusion that I do not appreciate Benjamin Barber’s work. In
working my way through the text, I found myself struggling time and again
either to see legitimacy in his arguments, follow a passage that was not either
repetitive or random, or find a section that did not insult me as a reader.
Certainly, Barber points out a number of societal aspects and shortcomings of
modern culture, and I believe some of his points deserve more development. Yet
I also believe that the subjects in Barber’s Consumed are best discussed by an individual with greater skill in
writing. As has become evident to me, I am not the only individual to perceive Consumed in such a way.
Firstly, let me restate that Barber
makes valid observations about our society. His notion of civic schizophrenia, which
“divides the choosing self into opposing fragments and ultimately denies
legitimacy to the fragment we understand to be ‘civic’ or ‘public’” (Barber
128), is worth attention. Current prevailing attitudes in the U.S promote more
individualistic and self-promoting choices, with regard for common welfare
often relegated to the back-seat. I do not think people actively seek out to deny
public prosperity, but the oft-mentioned “tragedy of the commons” is a very
real issue, born of personally rational behavior but yielding publically
irrational outcomes. One can apply the idea of civic schizophrenia to
governments and nations just as well as individuals, as the current state of
the Earth’s environment suffers from argument and debate between global bodies.
Countries naturally seek out their best options, economically and politically,
but this can lead to destructive results. In reading over the section, I
related Postman’s End of Education,
particularly his “Spaceship Earth” narrative, to some of the themes that Barber
was discussing.
Similarly, I was rather interested
in Barber’s section on “Restoring Capitalism”, in which he discusses how the
market economy we have may be utilized to address very real and prevalent
problems. The problems, however, are those of global need and lack of efficient
means of living (as in impoverished African or South American regions). Barber’s
central thesis, with regards to infantilization, is relevant in how wealthy
nations have a consumer basis for “faux” needs, and marketers and producers
fail to address the real needs of Earth’s populations. Yet the “Restoring
Capitalism” section presents intriguing options for addressing the world’s struggling
populations. Barber addresses three main examples, “C.K Prahalad’s strategy of
mining ‘the fortune at the bottom of the [consumer] pyramid’… Muhammad Yunus’s
idea for lifting women and their families out of poverty through microcredit…
and Hernando de Soto’s inventive idea of addressing poverty by legalizing
informal and black-market elements of the private economy” (Barber 320). The
topics introduced in the section were exciting and worth development, as I
found the entrepreneurial creativity of the discussed individuals refreshing.
For a brief moment, Barber was exploring actual solutions to, what I believe,
are the more important issues in his book.
For I observed countless instances
of Barber going on useless, insulting, or poorly-written tangents throughout Consumed, and the majority of his
writing detracted from the gems that are buried in the book’s pages. A prime example
can be found in “Reel Change”, a section dedicated to the “rationalization” of
entertainment like movies. I became alienated when Barber brought up
videogames, stating that games are for “men-boys interested in surrogative
violence and time-consuming, mind-bending, highly competitive, often murderous
play” (Barber 310). Apparently, according to Barber, I am a man-boy who favors
crassness and stupor-inducing violence-porn. Not only does Barber express his
own ignorance of the subject by stating that you “win on-line games like World
of Warcraft”, but he portrays his argument in a very opinionated and
sensationalist fashion. Never mind the complete confusion I experienced in the
following paragraph, where Barber states that “there have been interesting
attempts at using the genre to counter its pernicious effect and to achieve
worthier ends”, then goes on to talk about a game “permitting players to shoot
virtual Israeli soldiers” (Barber 311). The entire passage further removed me
from Barber’s work, and it begs the question of where else Barber poorly
manages his material.
In researching Consumed, I found two writers who poignantly express the qualms I
feel with the book. A review by the Cato Institute, written Will Wilkinson, states
“Barber seems to dislike consumer
capitalism so much because it is so at odds with the ideals that moves him. If
his argument is going to be persuasive, those ideals need to move us too, but
Barber is too busy mugging, skylarking, and relentlessly repeating himself to
give skeptical readers reason to see the appeal in his moral vision” (Wilkinson
297). The review mentions a problem that I established earlier: that the worthy
parts of Barber’s book are overshadowed by his unfortunate handling of the
subject. The review goes on to mentions Barber’s usage of support, saying “some-one
should tell him that gung-ho advertising executives advertising the effectiveness
of advertising is not in fact the best evidence of the effectiveness of
advertising. The argument of Consumed is a barrage of small facts tenuously
connected by under motivated pet theories … which at best add up to a vague
impression that there may be some evidence that supports the thesis” (Wilkinson
297). Both statements, in my opinion, are valid criticisms of Consumed and are worth attention. A
review of Consumed by The New York Times, by Pamela Paul,
expresses that “ultimately, Barber fails to tie the
disparate strands into a coherent argument. Much of the book feels as if it
were cobbled together by a series of grad students with a Nexis account” (“Proceed
to Checkout”, The New York Times).
Yet, like myself, Pamela Paul expresses sorrow at how Barber handled the book,
asserting that his shortcomings are “a shame, because the messages contained in
“Consumed” are important”.
I apologize for the lengthy and
potentially baseless reaction that I have written. But, as we are AP Language
and Composition students, I think it is important to explore the nitty-gritty
elements and usages of writing, when good or bad. If anything, Consumed demonstrated to me how an argument
that is captivating at its core can be mangled by its author. Certainly, I do
not mean to rip Barber’s work to shreds, nor invalidate the man. However, based
on my observations, inspections, and deliberation regarding Consumed, I can say that I dislike his
writing. And that is why I have made such an effort in this reaction post: I
disapprove of the work but approve of the ideas, and this conflict has
compelled me to explore Consumed as
best as I can.
Works Cited
Barber, Benjamin. Consumed:
How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole. New York: W.W. Norton
and Company, 2008. Print
Paul, Pamela. “Proceed to Checkout.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 8 April 2007. Web. 6 Nov. 2013.
Wilkinson, Will. “Book Review: Consumed”. The Cato Journal
27.2 (2007): 297. Web. 6 Nov. 2013.
