Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses

by Theodore Dalrymple

Book Overview

This new collection of essays by the author of Life at the Bottom bears the unmistakable stamp of Theodore Dalrymple's bracingly clearsighted view of the human condition. It suggests comparison with... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566636434
• ISBN13: 9781566636438
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher
• Length: 356 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A merited dystopian view of our declining culture

Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels in real life) has been viewing the bottom of British culture for many years as a psychiatrist and social commentator. As a psychiatrist, Dalrymple practiced in a prison and at a hospital in Birmingham, England. Nearly all his patients are from what can be fairly considered the "lower class" in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. These are the people who have been destroyed by the well-intentioned, but intellectually empty theories of the socialists and social reformers who believed they were delivering people from want, but in fact created a true dystopia. By making sure everyone could have a roof over their heads, food on their tables and changes in their jeans without lifting a finger, but by taking from the fewer and fewer productive people in English society, an underclass was created. With no reason to exert themselves and a popular culture that literally urges an endless regime of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll (or its equivalent), Dalyrmple has witnessed the destruction of English character. Rampant alcoholism and drug use; increasing illegitimacy; children raised without any form of parental supervision or guidance; the destruction of traditional mores and respect for law and more; a refusal to see the dangers of failing to insist upon the assimilation of foreign, even hostile, immigrants and more are contributing to the deterioration of English society. By implication, Dalyrmple makes it plain that this same kind of social destruction will soon infect and ultimately destroy all the Western nations. Dalyrmple offers no nostrums, no cures or panaceas. He is a reporter, not a reformer. Some of the twenty-six essays here are puzzling as they wander a bit too deeply into Shakespeare and the application of his words to modern times. But other of Dalrymple's essays are simply searing indictments of the foolishness of intellectuals, socialists and those who are blind to their own ignorance. Dalrymple's critiques of D. H. Lawrence, Virgina Woolf, Kinsey and other empty-headed intellectuals should be required reading. Virgina Woolf, for instance, saw no evil in the Nazis and urged people to do nothing to fight them, an attitude mirrored in today's England in those who see no evil in terrorist bombers who destroy innocent people. Most people have never heard of Stefan Zweig, one of the most famous writers in pre-war Germany. Dalyrmple uses his 1942 suicide to brilliantly illuminate the death of what was once considered culture. His commentary on an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art called "Sensation." Sensation was considered by many to be simply a display of bad taste. But "intellectuals" considered it a demonstration of free expression and artistic license. Here Dalyrmple contrasts the lionization of a female killer of children with the poignant pleas of the mother to remove a disgusting "artwork" of the murderess from exhibition. The smug words of the director of the Royal Academy once again drive

An important cultural critique

Theodore Dalrymple is a top-notch English commentator and a gifted essayist. The articles featured here represent some of his best and most recent writings. The volume is divided into two major sections: arts and letters, and society and politics. He introduces this collection of essays with this line: "The fragility of civilization is one of the great lessons of the twentieth century." The line between civilization and barbarism is very thin, and needs to be zealously protected. Yet many of our intellectuals, argues Dalrymple, are either ignorant of the dividing line, or are doing their best to abolish that line altogether. Generally these intellectual and political elites are of the left. But the right is not immune from such characters. "There has been an unholy alliance between those on the left, who believe that man is endowed with rights but no duties," he argues,and "libertarians on the right, who believe that consumer choice is the answer to all social questions." While civilisation must have its critics, it must also have its defenders and preservers as well. Dalrymple takes on the many critics of civilization, especially those of the utopian variety, who believe that an untried ideal is always better than a flawed but tried reality. The cultural despisers and civilization corrupters are many within the field of literature and the arts. From Virginia Woolf to Versace, Dalrymple examines a number of leading figures who have left a legacy of destruction and despair. Much of what passes for art, fashion or literature today is simply an exercise in bashing the West and the championing of hedonism, nihilism and barbarism. His chapters on society and politics are especially of interest. He covers topics as diverse as the problems of Islam, the sexualisation of society, the death of childhood and mass murderers. Most of these chapters are minor classics in their own right. His chapter on the folly of legalising drugs is a small masterpiece of social commentary, logical thought and fluid prose. Part of the reason for Dalrymple's accurate and acute observations of the decrepit condition of much of modern life is the fact that he also a doctor. He has worked for many years in hospitals, prisons, and other social hot spots. He has witnessed first hand the tragic results of our social engineers and their distorted vision of reality. Both in the UK and overseas, he has encountered first hand the bitter fruit of dying civilizations. His incisive and clearly penned assessments of the decline of Western culture are a much-needed antidote to the utopianism and elitism of so many of our social spin doctors. His writings are as important and prophetic as they are skilfully crafted.

A horrifying view of the future

Theodore Dalrymple is widely traveled with an incredible exposure to other cultures. One of his essays concerns the problems of Africa and is the best thing I have read on that sad state of affairs. I am also a physician and have a good acquaintance with city hospitals in America. Things have not got so bad here but some of the trends are not good. My British friends do not believe that it is as bad there as Dalrymple describes but one, a famous surgeon in London, has expressed alarm at the number of young women medical students who are converting to Islam. These are not the children of immigants. What an educated women would see in Islam is a mystery to both of us. This book of essays has already predicted the subsequent riots in France. His picture of the inner cities of England is worrisome. These children who are living such self-destructive lives are not the great grandchildren of slaves. They are the products of progressive education and the welfare state. Some of the same pathology he sees can be found in "blue state" cities in the US where wealthy progressives live in guarded enclaves while violent slums occupy most of the rest of the city. Other reviewers have complained that Dalrymple does not offer solutions. We in America have an advantage here. We are still the most religious society in Christendom. Traditional values hold sway in "red states." We have an active conservative movement demanding school vouchers for poor children trapped in hellish schools. Some trends here are reversing the pendulum from license back to sanity. Rudy Giuliani used the "broken window" theory of civic governance, mentioned by Dalrymple in one essay, to get control of New York City. Home schooling and vouchers offer an alternative to progressive education. His book is a warning to us. This is what can happen if the social customs of millenia are discarded. It may be too late for England, a tragedy, but it is not to late for us to see the future and avoid it.

UK/DK

As soon as I finished reading the preface, I knew I was hooked on this book and its controversial author. British physician/writer, Dr. Theodore Dalrymple is an unapolegetic critic of our post-modern times, offering insight and accusation to the guilt ridden political Left and its allies in the Arts and Academia for their trashing the ethics of restraint and responsibility. Dalrymple has worked many the manmade hells of Africa and Asia, many of the people he encountered in the most destitute of these places still struggled to maintain some sense of stability and order in their homes. They refused, in spite of war and disease and oppression, to surrender their human dignity. Ironically, back in the technological and constitutional UK, Dalrymple finds the opposite. What was once the land of civility and propriety, England has increasingly become a nihilistic mess of criminal perversity and selfish hedonism. People of the West are abandoning family bonds, forsaking traditional roles and modes of identity. Sadly it's those most in need of familial love and duty, those at the social and economic bottom of society, who are being encouraged down this path by a welfare state no longer so much a neccessary safety net but moreso a useless security blanket. Working the hospitals and clinics for those on the lowest rungs of the working class, Dalrymple encounters the daily freaks and victims of our self-destructive society. Men without an inkling of self worth, drug addicted, surviving as criminal parasites on chocolate bars, fathering child after child literally without a thought of concern. Women suffering the abuse of these men, allowing them into their homes. Children physically and sexually abused, then tossed out onto the streets as soon as possible. Even the ultra-conservative British Muslim community is collapsing. The grandchildren of immigrants remain in a cultural limbo between the secular West and the Muslim East, seething with spite and rage for a society which not only tolerates but often encourages them in its self-hating dreamquest for "diversity." In addition to writing a column for the London Spectator for the last thirteen years, Dalrymple has also contributed many essays for the City Journal (published by the Manhattan Institute). OUR CULTURE, WHAT'S LEFT OF IT... is a collection of 26 of these essays from the years 1996-2004 (including "When Islam Beaks Down" named by David Brooks of the New York Times as the best journal essay of 2004) and is divided into two themed sections: Art and Letters, Society and Politics. Dalrymple peoples this book with almost every facet from the fringe: combat photographers, mass murderers, addicts, fashionistas, iconoclast-chic intellectuals and artists, communists, gangsters, [...], even criminals who use the British penal system as a poor man's health spa and retreat. He writes on and references some of the giants of politics, art and literature and society: Shakespeare as psychological as well as liter

a stunning achievement

It is difficult to write a review of this book without appearing ridiculously gushing. It contains some of the most profound literary, cultural and political comment that exists, and is rooted in extensive experience as a prison doctor in the UK and elsewhere which most left liberal pundits would avoid like the plague. Extreme independence of mind, sharp observation and deep humanity all combine to produce a truly indispensable book. Addendum: Mr Bourne in his review grabs the wrong end of many sticks. Perhaps he should play fewer computer games (see his other reviews) and get out more often. He claims that "penury and depredation" existed before the welfare state: so what? Contrary to what Bourne says, Dalrymple does not blame modern art for the failure of civilization. However, he does link the nihilism of Brit Art with the dominant cultural ethos of modern Britain, which is hardly controversial, an ethos which is apparent throughout popular culture, all the universities and even the dumbed down BBC. Dalrymple understands, on the basis of his experience of the world, and his profound knowledge of the cultural and scientific heritage of the West, now routinely denigrated in...the West, that culture is all important. Once that's gone, we are lost. Dalrymple is criticised for relying on "personal experience" with little data. This criticism is often made of Dalrymple by people who have no or little experience of anything, and therefore do not value experience. It is also made by people who seem to think that only pseudo-scientific sociologists wearing white coats and armed with meaningless charts and graphs, can offer an "objective" view of society. This is a deeply philosophically illiterate view. Presumably they think that Sebastian Haffner's memoir of the early years of Nazism, in which he described the mass yobbishness and dumbed down idiocy engulfing large sections of German society, is "scientifically" worthless because not backed up by "data" but is only based on "personal experience". Indeed, how did Shakespeare manage without "data"? Well, maybe he was just very intelligent... Further addendum: Wudhi states that "a strain of sexual disgust or at least extreme discomfort" is to be found in Dalrymple's writings. In "Sex and the Shakespeare Reader" it is clear that Dalrymple doesn't object to human sexuality per se. It is, rather the "All sex, all the time" attitude that he rightly finds disturbing. One need only see very young girls being sexualised, in their dress and attitudes, to agree -- provided one actually cares for their welfare. The phenomenon of premature sexualisation is the result of the kind of psychobabble that Wadhu clearly finds very profound, the view that one must "express oneself" no matter what. As a widely accepted theory of the good life, this leads to a race to the bottom, to the violence and pre-mature sexual activity that is an all-prevasive feature of life in large section of British society. If Wa