The Impulse Society: America in the Age of Instant Gratification by Paul Roberts, 266 pages
The character of Veruca Salt was first introduced in the 1964 book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but she received her definitive anthem: "Don't care how, I want it now!" in the 1971 film adaptation. By then a whole generation of Verucas (and Verucos) had grown to adulthood. The social changes that shaped their characters were chronicled by Lasch in The Culture of Narcissism and Rieff in Triumph of the Therapeutic. It is now Paul Roberts' task to illuminate the world they have made.
Although Roberts touches on social and psychological developments, his primary focus is on the distortions impulsive consumerism produces in the economic and political spheres. In the former, it is incarnate in the quick buck mentality of the financial sector (which trickled down into the subprime mortgage crisis), while in the latter it finds its natural home in a tribalized polity based on knee-jerk reactions rather than considered ideas, catered to by a media which feeds the audience a daily slate of news items on which they must form an opinion and take a stand, whether trivial or vital.
Roberts goes out of his way to attempt to be fair - he is clear that his loyalties lie left of center - but he fails, probably unconsciously - the left is considered reasonable even when wrong, while the right is caricatured. This is ironic, considering that it is exactly the sort of bias that results from the kinds of epistemic bubbles he criticizes elsewhere. A greater flaw lies in Roberts' shallow approach. The book never faces the root of radical atomistic individualism in the Enlightenment idea of society as rules of engagement in a buried but ongoing war of all against all. In a culture where morality has been reduced to questions of power relations, true community is impossible. Problems based on philosophical presumptions cannot be solved by policy wonks.
This is a good book, a part of an important ongoing conversation, but one that ultimately fails to contribute much of substance.
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