Pacific Shift

Drawing evidence from events and cultural artifacts ranging from the cold war to rock-and-roll video, this study analyzes the shifting focus of global culture from the traditional Atlantic centers to the dynamic Pacific

Our cultural center of gravity, argues Thompson, has shifted from the Atlantic to the Pacific Basin. In that emerging culture, cooperation counts more than consumerism, and politics is rooted in bioregion and community instead of warring parties or nation-states. The growth of the computer and electronics industries in the area encompassing Los Angeles and Tokyo heralds the birth of a planetary information network. Thompson (At the Edge of History, etc.) credits Ronald Reagan for solidifying the shift "from New York to Los Angeles, from steel mills to Star Wars." But Reagan, who is "the shadow of Walt Disney," serves as living proof that presidents merely act out roles, and a new political ecosystem must be the work of countless individuals. Aided by diagrams illustrating mythic dualisms (charisma/routine, order/entropy), Thompson maps out a world dominated by Russia and China ("the great conservatives"), America and Western Europe ("the great liberals") and the "radical upstarts," the OPEC nations. Portentous writing and New Age slogans mask fuzzy thinking.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

There have been three previous major "cultural ecologies" in Western development, says Thompson, and the emerging fourth or Pacific Basin "Commonlife" illustrates that postmodern politics is becoming "unbound from the nation-state" and that "to have a new culture, we must have a transformation of consciousness." All interested in the future of planetary society will find here a blend of polemics, erudition, and New Age pragmatics both fascinating and provocative. Readers of Thompson's earlier The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light ( LJ 1/15/81) will be at home with a noetic art that plays somewhere between Spengler and Teilhard de Chardin in animated interpretation of how narrative, cybernetics, Zen, and myth demonstrate the ecology of consciousness in "meta-industrial" culture. Guy Burneko, Philosophy Dept., Univ. of North Carolina, Asheville
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.