{"product_id":"9781882926718","title":"Aliens in America: The Strange Truth about Our Souls","description":"Does human history have a future? In Aliens in America, political   philosopher Peter Augustine Lawler argues that the advent of the new   biotechnology-cloning, gene therapy, Prozac, Ritalin, etc.-means that we must   consider anew the possibility that Americans are living near the end of history,   a time when full equality will be achieved through the elimination of all that   is distinctively human about us: the ability to passionately love and hate, to   search for God, to strive nobly for truth and wisdom. For the elimination of   human distinctiveness is now being systematically pursued through the   biochemical transformation of human nature. Beginning with a consideration of   David Brooks's popular and influential characterization of modern Americans as   \"bourgeois bohemians,\" Lawler paints a picture that is not altogether hopeful.   If Brooks and other contemporary social commentators are correct, our elites   care about little more than their own psychological and physical comfort. Though   they at times still realize that simply being affluent, tolerant, and democratic   consumers is not entirely satisfying, their laissez-faire libertarianism leads   them to consent to the \"alien extermination program\" being carried out-for   ostensibly humanitarian reasons-under the aegis of biotechnological science.\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e   In understated and often ironic prose, Lawler shows how the soft tyranny of the utopian biotechnological project is the logical outcome of, and is supported by, various strands of modern thought, including atheistic scientism, liberal pragmatism, Lockean individualism, and the cult of therapeutic democracy. He demonstrates how, in different ways, the ideas popularized by thinkers lilke Francis Fukayama, Carl Sagan, and Richard Rorty are intended to make us forget that a truly human life is necessarily limited, that we can only live well by accepting the misery, sense of homelessness, and alienation that accompany life as much as do joy and love. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e  With help from Alexis de Tocqueville and Walker Percy, Lawler offers a defense of the common experience of ordinary men and women in all its harsh ambiguity. Our instinctual opposition to attempts to transform us through chemicals, technology, language, or the machinery of the state is not, as some liberal communitarians think, rooted in a fearful attempt to escape the world, but in a positive affirmation of this world's fundamental goodness and the love, both human and divine, to be found within it. Our souls are not yet lost. But they will be if we refuse to acknowledge that, in this world at least, we are destined to be aliens.\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAbout the   Author\u003c\/strong\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  Peter Augustine   Lawler is Professor of Government at Berry College in Georgia. He is author or   editor of nine books, including \u003cem\u003ePostmodernism Rightly Understood: The Return   to Realism in American Thought,\u003c\/em\u003e and editor of the quarterly journal   \u003cem\u003ePerspectives on Political Science\u003c\/em\u003e. ","brand":"ISI Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47057986257136,"sku":"9781882926718","price":24.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781882926718_p0.jpg?v=1763604580","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781882926718","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}