Book Specs 📖

• Author: John Berger
• Genre: Non-fiction/Political Essays
• Publisher: Verso Books
• Pages: 160

One Sentence Synopsis🔖

A series of philosophically political essays from the “War on Terror” to the consumerist society, and how we can combat feelings of despair using artistic expression.

Notes/Thoughts📝

• This is my second Berger novel which was drastically different from Ways of Seeing. It was fun to read fiery Berger. Some concepts did go over my head and made understanding difficult: a good sign that there is still a steep learning curve I will need to conquer. Although I’ve wanted to learn about political discourse for awhile, I’ve mostly avoided the topic because it’s overwhelming, mostly composed of male-centered views, and a large distrust in politicians as a whole. Understanding that politics is a search for justice that anyone can participate has opened the pandora’s box about how I can make a difference using my own art, my own way. “Even the smallest stone makes a ripple in the water”, so let’s start with the pebble:)
• This was a good primer to understand some hot topics on the world stage and how art can be used as a weapon to combat despair and fear. As an artist himself, Berger stresses how the world of politics and art are not mutually exclusive, on the contrary, art is the lens through which we can inspire change.
• I enjoyed the snippets of poetry in the book – it gave some relational and emotional context to the global state of affairs and the urgency of taking action as humans. Without the poems, I fear the book would be too advanced for my understanding as a beginner. I hope to continue to educate myself and show up more intentionally in this space!!

“Quotes”🗣

” Despair without fear, without resignation, without a sense of defeat, makes for a stance towards the world…”

“Our poems

like milestones

must line the road”

“Democracy is a proposal (rarely realized) about decision making; it has little to do with election campaigns…Democracy should not be confused with the ‘freedom’ of binary choices, the publication of opinion polls or the crowding of people into statistics. These are its pretences.”

“For us to live and die properly, things have to be named properly. Let us reclaim our words.”

“The powerful can’t tell stories: boasts are the opposite of stories, and any story, however mild, has to be fearless; the powerful today live nervously.”

“…space is not so much an emptiness as an exchange.”

“Each choice is quite close to a sacrifice. And the sum of the choices is a person’s destiny.”

“Fanaticism comes form any form of chosen blindness accompanying the pursuit of a single dogma…The so-called war against terroism is in fact a war between two fanaticisms. “

“Sometimes it happens that a question is for a moment more pertinent than answers or explanations.”

“The consumer is essentially somebody who feels, or is made to feel, lost, unless he or she is consuming. Brand names and logos become the place names of the Nowhere.”

“…the way to resist globalization is not to deny globality, but to imagine what is the finite sum of all possible particularities and to get used to the idea that, as long as a single particularity is missing, globality will not be what it should be for us.”

“Within all desire there is pity as well as appetite; the two, whatever their relative proportion, are threaded together. Desire is inconceivable without a wound.“

“…every simplification, every label, serves only the interests of those who wield power; the more extensive their power, the greater their need for simplications.”