On Paradise Drive

How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense

On Paradise Drive is a quick and enjoyable read. Brooks is snarky and he overgeneralizes about society, both of which sins he freely confesses. Reading On Paradise Drive you might find yourself thinking that he is just repeating stereotypes, that there isn’t much depth here, but then encounter a sentence that exactly describes your life experience. For example, in contrast to the muscular SUV set, intellectuals “putter around in their low-slung Japanese sedans with a clutter of books and magazines on the backseat…” That does describe this reviewer accurately.

Brooks mainly discusses life in the suburban sprawl of the United States, which reached unprecedented levels in the early 2000s. He’s writing during the housing boom, before there was much talk of the declining middle class, and celebrating the diversity of subcultures spread like a patchwork across the American landscape. If you’ve read Bobos in Paradise, you recall that his term means “Bo-hemian Bo-urgeoisie” – referring to the enfolding of hip, counterculture life into mainstream middle America. A quote from this latest work: “Nobody in this decentralized, fluid social structure knows who is mainstream and who is alternate, who is elite and who is populist.” What he’s describing is the social era that in Turnings theory we call the Unraveling.

Another quote: “Ours is not a social structure conducive to revolution, domestic warfare, and conflict. The United States is not on the verge of an incipient civil war or a social explosion. If you wanted to march against the ruling elite, where exactly would you do it?” But now, in 2017, the book is looking dated. The diversity of subcultures has coalesced into two pretty definite groups, battling fiercely in government and media over whose values agenda will be instituted. Maybe three groups, if you think about the Sanders-Clinton split and all the non-voters of last year’s election. The conflict underway is about whose version of paradise will be considered mainstream in the years to come.

Thus this book is a brief synopsis of a now defunct social era.” Which isn’t saying that it’s a bad work, just that it’s been overtaken by history.

This review appears in modified form on "In The Zeitgeist," my blog, at: http://stevebarrera.com/book-review-on-paradise-drive/

Year: 2004
Author: David Brooks (Generation-X, born 1961)


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