Thoughts for a Rainy Day: Essays 2024-25

The present volume consists of three major essays I wrote during the years 2024-25, in addition to a series of lectures I gave at UNAM, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, during the latter part of 2025. Topics discussed include the way in which American sitcoms-Cheers, Seinfeld, Friends, The Sopranos, and The Big Bang Theory-can be seen as ＂X-rays＂ of the American psyche; an imaginary discussion among great thinkers such as George Orwell, Wallace Shawn, and Leo Tolstoy as to where the human race is headed; and an investigation into the sources of human cruelty, highlighting works such as William Golding’s famous novel, Lord of the Flies; Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; and the controversial Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971. Finally, there is also a consideration of the ＂tectonic shift＂ that the West is currently undergoing, similar to the shift from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era, but this time from the reign of capitalism and the geopolitical arrangements that have been in place since 1945 to Something Else-the features of which are only now coming into view. Do we have reason to be hopeful? is perhaps the major question of our time.

Morris Berman is a poet, novelist, essayist, social critic, and cultural historian. He has written thirty books and nearly 200 articles, and has taught at a number of universities in Europe, North America, Chile, and Mexico. He won the Governor’s Writers Award for Washington State in 1990, and was the first recipient of the annual Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies in 1992. In 2000, The Twilight of American Culture was named a ＂Notable Book＂ by the New York Times Book Review, and in 2013 he received the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity from the Media Ecology Association. Dr. Berman lives in Mexico.