 |
|
Book titled "American Vertigo" written
by French writer Bernard-Henri L¨¦vy depicts elegantly the core issues
of contemporary American society. (Photo:
Globaltimes.cn)
Photo
Gallery>>> |
By Li Danjie
BEIJING, June 30 -- People may get a new understanding when reading
American Vertigo today, when the new American president, Barack Obama, has
promised to renew the image of America in the world, when the American and
global economies are undergoing a serious depression after Wall Street's first
financial crisis since the start of globalization, and when neo-liberalism is
being called into question and people are debating whether to follow John Keynes
or Adam Smith.
The French writer Bernard-Henri L¨¦vy was traveling in the United States in
2004 when all these problems were still brewing. In his eyes, their outburst
wasn't accidental. As an observer from a European culture, he gives a clear
overview of American thinking. These thoughts are the reason why the Americans
were interested in Alexis de Tocqueville and why we need to read L¨¦vy today.
In L¨¦vy's work, the America we are familiar with becomes an unknown
variable, a huge and bewildering field full of changes. When we first come to
New York, we tend to regard it as America. New York, however, is just a starting
point of this country of immigrants with the distant West Coast at the other
end, as Tocqueville told us 200 years ago. If we read L¨¦vy's book with a map, we
will know that America has countless facets and that any conclusion will be
dubious if we do not carefully examine various opinions on our own or with the
help of others.
L¨¦vy started his journey at Newport, Rhode Island, where Tocqueville first
landed in America. He traveled from the Rikers Island Prison in New York to
Muslim communities in Detroit, from the gun exhibition in Dallas to New Orleans,
the home of jazz and from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba back to Provincetown in Cape
Cod, the birthplace of America.
He interviewed people from all walks of American society, from condemned
prisoners to priests, from Barack Obama, who was then a Democratic senator, to
the neo-conservative Richard Holbrooke, from prostitutes to the ex-first lady
Hillary Clinton. He tried to understand America through facts instead of
imagination. In his work, the vast, rough and vigorous American land goes
perfectly along with the gentle and elegant European intellect.
The book depicts elegantly the core issues of contemporary American
society, such as American patriotism, racial and religious issues, the prison
system and medical care, gun control and the war on terror, neo-conservatism and
illegal immigration. All of these lead to the crux of the problem: social
differentiation and segregation leading to isolation and resistance.
When leaving, the author was impressed most by the poverty rather than the
hurricane in New Orleans, which brings outsiders to an unexpected question: Is
it the outcome of democracy and freedom that even in America there are numerous
"third worlds?"
There is no simple answer - Tocqueville forecast the inevitable
arrival of democracy in the 1800s.
He did not focus on how to avoid democracy, but rather on how to ward off
its disadvantages and harms.
Actually, the "American vertigo" is also the vertigo of all men. We forget
about the past, and become incapable of connecting reality with history. Our
life becomes superficial and pointless, so that we keep looking for meaning.
It is not only the problem of Americans, but of all modern countries -
modernization has reformed almost all relationships in this world according to
the buyer-seller formulation. It is unworkable to deal with irrational human
society in a rational way.
As Walter Lippmann put it, even Plato "picked up the tools of reason, and
disappeared into the Academy, leaving the world to Machiavelli."
However, the development of countries is still moving forward.
(Source: GlobalTimes.cn)
