Why Is This Book So Hard to Find?

Finally, my copy of True Enough arrived via Amazon. None of the brick and mortars I've visited recently carried it -- again, in an attempt to support my local book monger. Granted, it's a year old now, but this is a very meaningful tome. Probably why you don't see it on the average shelves.

I did get a good couple of hours with CALS copy at the downtown Little Rock location, and came away with some quick hits for the blog.

The central premise is that no longer do we fight over interpretations of events, we fight over the literal facts. I see that often with my history students at NWACC, and my students last spring at UA in journalism. Farhad Manjoo goes a little further than helping validate some of my own dark theories -- the rise of the brand and the decline of the counterbalancing media.

Manjoo posits that society works better when people trust one another, and that trust is breaking down. As trust fades, the "social capital" of a society is spent.

It made me realize something I had been watching for some time. You cannot change a truth held as self-evident through acculturation and observation. You know it to be true, because in the echo chamber you lived you came to see it as gospel and no amount of factual evidence will dissuade the believer.

Manjoo does have his own switch backs. Right after this jewel -- "A medium that makes lying easier won't foster trust" -- he attempts to use eBay to suport the point that on-line communities can be filled with trust. Obviously, he hasn't tried to buy anything there lately.

But eBay transactions are predicated on the fact I trust that you won't screw me over deliberately on a sale, and it brings up the concept of Particularized vs. General Trust. I know you to be trustworthy because I know you as a particular person vs. I don't trust people from your social group because of my general mistrust.

This is one of my early takeaway quotes, speaking of society becoming:

". . . pistons in what has become, today, a powerful engine of propaganda, one that drives nearly all the recent examples of our society's unfettered departures from "the reality-based world"."

However, his final line of the book is going on the permanent quote sheet:

"Choosing means trusting some people and distrusting the rest. Choose wisely."

Indeed.