THE EUROPEAN DREAM

Reviewed 1/09/2006

The European Dream, by Jeremy Rifkin

THE EUROPEAN DREAM How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream Jeremy Rifkin New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2004				Rating: 5.0 High
ISBN-13 978-1-58542-345-3
ISBN 1-58542-345-9	434pp.	HC	$25.95

Some Notes about Number

Many authors have problems with number in their sentences: that is, they match a singular subject with the plural form of the verb or vice-versa. Most often, I find, it has to do with ignoring the true subject of the sentence or dependent clause and referring instead to the noun in the prepositional phrase immediately before the verb. It's as if, when typing the sentence, they count back from the verb to the nearest noun that looks like a subject, and choose the singular or plural verb form based on that.

Here's an illustration of what I mean. On page 257, Rifkin writes: "Globalization of financial flows, communications, and transportation has sped the global flow of human labor." This is correct as to number. But exchange the positions of "transportation" and "communications" and it most likely would have appeared thus: "Globalization of financial flows, transportation, and communications have sped the global flow of human labor." In the second form, the mistake is making the verb agree with the nearest preceding noun (communications) rather than the true subject, Globalization, which is singular.

Such errors appear in this book with unusual frequency. And someone (the author or an editor) has particular trouble with "criteria" and "phenomena"; they both are actually plural but are treated here as singular.

Making Subjects and Verbs Agree is a good reference which illustrates these rules diagrammatically. (I am forced to add that there is dispute on some points. See the topic "agreement by proximity" at Subject and Verb Agreement in The American Heritage Book of English Usage on Bartleby.)

Errata

Page 17:	Rifkin espouses contradictory views: a) the American dream's central tenets are inapplicable to current conditions; b) its essence is gone, leaving the core hollow.
	How to reconcile these seemingly contradictory views?

Page 27:	Rifkin declares that investment doesn't require hard work.
	That's arguable; even a mutual fund needs to be monitored.

Page 27:	Rifkin also assumes that most young people think luck will make them rich.
	The Newsweek survey he cites on page 26 doesn't support that. (However, I have heard news reports making such a claim. It may tie in to the "episodic grasp of reality" that Vincent Ruggiero complains about.)

Page 39:	"Much of those gains in the U.S., however, were wiped out with the stock market plunge in 2000."
	Number error: S/B "was wiped out".

Page 40:	"There are more poor people living in poverty in America than in the sixteen European nations for which data is available."
	Extra word: S/B "more people living in poverty".

Page 45:

"European productivity growth outperformed the U.S. during virtually the entire half-century following World War II. Between 1950 and 1973, European productivity grew by 4.44 percent, compared to 2.68 percent in the U.S., and from 1973 to 2000, the productivity growth in Europe increased by 2.4 percent, compared to 1.37 percent in the U.S."

This is sloppy language that can lead the reader to an incorrect conclusion. Compare the previous sentence, which states that, by 2002, Europe had attained a productivity 97 percent of America's. The growth rate of productivity is important only if sustained long enough for the second-place group to catch up. What matters is that Europe's absolute productivity is comparable to America's. And see page 46, which has Norway beating us in 2002 by a substantial margin: Norway $45.55; America $38.83.

Page 47:	"The grid, says grid specialists Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman..."
	Number error: S/B "say grid specialists".

Page 49:	"Much of the funds have come from so-called sin taxes on tobacco and alcohol."
	Number error: S/B "has come from". (Arguably)

Page 55:	"All of this bad news begs the question, Does the European Union really believe that its economic future is likely to look up substantially if it merely follows the U.S. lead on labor, welfare, trade, and other reforms?"
	Incorrect capitalization: S/B "does the European Union". It would be correct if enclosed in quotation marks.

Page 58:	"Every window is its own work of art, suggesting to the Americans passing by that what is inside the store is more than products to sell, they are gifts to share."
	Number error: S/B "the objects inside the store are".

Page 69:	"...small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) ..."
	Any reader can guess that the "E" in SME stands for Enterprises. But why not make it explicit? (Especially since "SME" is also commonly used to mean "subject-matter expert".)

Page 72:	"The purchase of more missiles, airplanes, tanks, and bombs are all added to the GDP."
	Number error: S/B "purchases".

Page 72:	"One would be hard-pressed to say that any of these activities actually result in a net improvement in our quality of life."
	Number error: S/B "actually results".

Page 74:	"When I walk into men's rooms in Europe, the lights go on automatically and then shut off nine or ten minutes later whether I am done or not."
	I'm not doubting Rifkin, but this is bad lighting design. The sensors should keep the lights on while anyone is present. (I do wonder why he thinks being left in the dark is a good thing.)

Page 85:	"...the reality is that the American Dream represents the thinking of a moment of time, frozen in European history and transported whole cloth to American shores in the eighteenth century, where it continued to animate the American experience right up to the present day."
	I cannot tell if Rifkin intends this phrase to have its current American meaning of something spurious.

Page 93:	"Between the late medieval age and the early modern era, a spate of dramatic new technologies were introduced into Europe..."
	Number error: S/B "a spate of dramatic new technologies was introduced". (Arguable)

Page 94:	"Keeping track of vastly sped-up commercial transactions taking place over much longer distances required the kind of record-keeping that would have simply been impossible in an oral or script culture."
	Purists, alert — here's a split infinitive! S/B "simply would have been". (Note that I often break this rule myself, and I seldom chastise anyone Enterprising enough to boldly split infinitives where none have been split before. Or, rather, has been split before.)

Page 97:	"Everything is nested up against everything else."
	Should this be "nestled"?

Page 98:	"Rather, the great cathedrals were designed with the idea of fixing everyone's gaze upward from the moment they walks inside, which is exactly what every visitor still does when they enter one of these grand temples."
	Number error: S/B "from the moment they walk inside".

Page 107:	"The Benedictines introduced more than a new temporal orientation when they introduced the 'schedule'."
	Why enclose it in quotes here, when it's already been discussed in the same context for several pages without them? (Split!).

Page 110:	"To become 'regular as clockwork' became the highest values of the new industrial age."
	Number error: S/B "the highest value".

Page 112:	"The new definition of efficiency migrated quickly from the machine bench to the factory floor, front office, the home, and personal life, to become the measure of human performance and the criteria for determining the value of human activity."
	Number error: S/B "the criterion".

Page 120:	"More important, each person approached what Shakespeare called, in The Tempest, 'this brave new world' alone..."
	This is misquoted to make it fit the context. The exact quote (found through the excellent Shakespeare Concordance) comes about midway through act 5, scene 1. It is: MIRANDA: O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't! PROSPERO: 'Tis new to thee.

Page 126:	"Mirrors reflected the new sense of interest in the self."
	Hah! A good and subtle pun.

Page 135:	"The social structure of feudal society operated in a manner similar to nature's grand hierarchy."
	The rest of the paragraph uses present tense. Fix it either by changing those several verbs or, better, by replacing the period after "hierarchy" with a colon: S/B "... hierarchy:".

Page 135:	"For example, when the king granted land to a lord or vessel, 'his rights over the land still remained, except for the particular interest he had parted with.' "
	Wrong (probably mis-transcribed) word: S/B "vassal", meaning "a person under the protection of a feudal lord to whom he has vowed homage and fealty."

Page 136:	"After more than a millennium of history, when people had belonged to the land, new legislative initiatives, in the form of the great Enclosure Acts, reversed the spatial and temporal playing field."
	Remove first comma: S/B: "After more than a millennium of history when people had belonged to the land,"

Page 136:	"Some became paid laborers working for the new owners, while others were forced to migrate to the nearest towns to find 'work' in the new industrial factories."
	Why put "work" in quotes here? What difference between farm work and factory work is it intended to emphasize?

Page 137:	"A mature private property regime, by contrast, substitutes subjective criteria like trust, with objective criteria like ownership titles, and provides..."
	Word choice: S/B "replaces". Also, remove the comma after "trust".

Page 140:	"Having laid out the broad intellectual groundwork for a bold new conception of private property in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the unfinished business of filling in both the substance and details of the modern notion of ownership was taken up in the seventeenth century by the political philosopher John Locke and later by..."
	Near as I can make out, this dangling participle means to refer to Martin Luther, John Calvin, Jean Bodin, in fact all the philosophers and religious reformers mentioned previously.

Page 154:	"With community comes deeper roots and less willingness to pick up and move to some unknown new place."
	Number error: S/B "come".

Page 162:	"It is the very different set of historical circumstances that led Europeans to temper their enthusiasm for capitalism while Americans became its most ardent champion."
	Number error: S/B "champions".

Page 162:	"The towns had graineries, shops, and inns, and were served by local craftsmen."
	Spelling error: S/B "graneries".

Page 167:	"...what existed was a thousand different stories and traditions being lived out in little hamlets, nestled in valleys..."
	This is fine. But compare page 97, where "nested" is used.

Page 178:	"They are forever pouring over election turnouts for signs of whether Americans are disengaging from the political process."
	Homonym error: S/B "poring".

Page 181:	"The national market and the nation-state suddenly feel a bit too small and limited to accommodate a world where more and more human activity—both economic and social—spill over the old edges and spread out onto the entire globe."
	Number error: S/B "activities". (That's the simplest fix.)

Page 183:	"The new communication technologies, by contrast, are cybernetic and not linear."
	There's nothing about cybernetics, the study of automatic control systems, that makes it inherently nonlinear.

Page 192:	"One is free to the extent one is not dependent or beholden on another."
	Usage: S/B "dependent on or beholden to".

Pages 198-9:	"Indeed, the EU's criteria for membership is value-based rather than geographically conditioned."
	Number error: S/B "are".

Page 200:	"After a thousand years of unremitting conflict, war, and bloodshed, the nations of Europe emerged from the shadows of two world wars, in the span of less than half a century, decimated: their population maimed and killed..."
	Remove first comma: S/B "two world wars in the span of less than half a century,". (Ignoring quibbles about the meaning of "decimated", and "population" vs. "populations".)

Page 207:	"This treaty reinforced the Union's committment to human rights and required applicant countries to uphold the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights as conditions for acceptance into the community."
	Number error: S/B "as a condition".

Page 210:	"The member states will also still retain control over decisions of whom they grant citizenship..."
	Usage: S/B "about whom".

Page 214:	"And, like the U.S. Constitution of more than two hundred years ago, one can point to the many hypocrisies and contradictions that belie the noble sentiments contained in the new European covenant."
	Usage: S/B "as with" to avoid dangling participle.

Page 216:	"...counterforces at the local and regional levels are emerging that are both challenging global, political, and commercial hegemony and..."
	Remove commas, fix number: S/B "global political and commercial hegemonies".

Page 216:	"...the scrappy little upstart company Linux, a firm started by social activists..."
	Linux is not a company; it is an open-source operating system for personal computers using Intel CPUs. However, there are plenty of companies based on it that are challenging Microsoft.

Page 218:	"Before Whitehead, most philosophers believed that phenomena was divided into two realities: what something was and what it did."
	Number error: S/B "were".

Page 219:	"Cybernetics comes from the Greek word kyberneties, which means 'steersman'."
	Spelling error: S/B "kybernetes".

Page 220:	"...and the extent to which it could be counted on to provide a broad social net for its citizenry."
	Looks to me like a missing word: S/B "broad social safety net"?

Page 221:	"...as government took on greater responsibilities and their bureaucracies ballooned..."
	Number error: S/B "governments".

Page 231:	"Neoliberals and libertarians favored just such a course..."
	Index omission: "Neoliberals" is not indexed, while "Neoconservatives" is.

Page 236:	"But, I would suggest that throughout history, people's experience of reality..."
	Move first comma: S/B "But I would suggest that, throughout history,".

Page 240:	"For the most part, these activities fall inside national boundaries and are not generally overtly political."
	Word order: S/B "are generally not overtly".

Page 247:	"A new generation of post-modern scholars took up their cause, arguing that the Enlightenment project, with its emphasis on grand meta-narratives..."
	I don't recall seeing this term defined previously. It does not appear in the index. However, on page 279 it is defined as material progress.

Page 250:	"Although European countries have experienced migratory waves in the past, the numbers, until late, have been relatively small..."
	Usage: S/B "until lately".

Page 256:	"...but it can in no way stop or reverse the process of significant population ageing in Europe."
	Spelling error: S/B "aging". (Note: the word is hyphenated in text.)

Page 262:	"Interestingly, their very universalism makes the Muslim world potentially more comfortable in a globalized society than many others."
	Number error: S/B "members of the Muslim world".

Page 221:	Appadurai's quote: "This incapacity of many deterritorialized groups to think their way out of the imaginary of the nation-state is itself the cause of much global violence because many movements of emancipation and identity are forced, in their struggles against existing nation-states, to embrace the very imaginary they seek to escape."
	Usage: "imaginary" is an adjective, but Appadurai uses it here as a noun. Perhaps he can claim poetic privilege. (I know he's not thinking of the square root of -1.) I would substitute "imagery", myself.

Page 264:	"...theologian John Milbank of the University of Virginia argues..."
	Spelling error: S/B "University".

Page 266:	"...we must in effect rediscover what creates the bond between humans that constitute a community."
	Number error: S/B "constitutes". (This, however, is arguably meant to refer to the humans making up (constituting) the community.)

Page 266:	"Still, missing from the equation is a new social glue that's powerful enough..."
	Remove comma: S/B "Still missing from the equation".

Page 272:	"We think, That could be my child."
	I've questioned this usage before. With "That" capitalized this way, it and the next four words would normally be enclosed in quotation marks. But perhaps there's a convention of which I'm unaware.

Page 272:	"...it doesn't penetrate deep enough to the core of our being like empathy and therefore is less powerful..."
	Usage: S/B "deep into the core of our being, like empathy,".

Page 272:	"Rather, a fully articulated global consciousness makes room for all three social clues but in a non-hierarchical fashion."
	Typo: S/B "glues,", as previously on the same page. (Note inserted comma.)

Page 302:	"Today, much of America's soft-power assets have begun to depreciate in value."
	Number error: S/B "many".

Page 307:	"Europe's strategic reconnaissance capability is a mere 10 percent of the U.S.'s, it's airlift capacity is only 20 percent of America's, and its precision-guided air-deliverance ordnance is approximately 10 percent of our own."
	S/B "its".

Page 313:	"It's important to note that these statements are coming out of a White House presided over by a liberal Democratic president."
	Since this refers to the Clinton administration, which is over and done: S/B "came". (I leave aside the question of whether Clinton could fairly be labeled "liberal".)

Page 314:	"The idea of an EU armed forces enjoys widespread public support."
	Number error: S/B "an EU armed force".

Page 314:	"...wrangling between the U.S. and the EU over the prospects for a European armed forces, at least for ..."
	Number error: S/B "a European armed force".

Page 316:	" ''Man's'' very nature is inquisitive, argued the architects of the Enlightenment."
	Too "P. C.": Since this is not a direct quote, there's no reason not to substitute "Mankind's" or "Humanity's" or something equally "politically correct".

Page 316:	"The idea of progress, so fundamental to the thinking of the modern world, is rendered moot if human beings were to accept self-imposed limits on what the mind could explore."
	Verb tense mismatch: S/B "would be rendered moot".

Page 316:	"...a hot soup of dense subatomic materials that replicate conditions believed to exist..."
	Number error: S/B "replicates". (Refers to "soup".)

Page 316:	"Some scientists worry that a high concentration of energy of the type being pursued at Brookhaven could conceivably lead to three doomsday outcomes."
	Three for the price of one? No; S/B "one of three doomsday outcomes".

Page 318:	"...the weight of scientific orthodoxy prevailed, and nuclear weapons and, later, nuclear power continued to be developed unabated."
	Not quite "unabated". (Not unless Rifkin were to specify a time period.) And such development had little to do with "scientific" orthodoxy; the decisions were political and commercial.

Page 319:	"...although certainly the Chinese might justifiably lay claim to some of the accolade."
	Number error: S/B "some of the accolades".

Page 319:	"But, even they [The Brits] temper their enthusiasm with an occasional romantic and sometimes class-directed reaction..."
	Remove comma: S/B "But even they".

Page 323:	"Even where it [NEPA] has been used, the threshold criteria for fulfilling NEPA requirements is so weak as to be largely ineffective in most instances."
	Number error: S/B "are".

Page 324:	"In early 2003, the European Union adopted a new rule prohibiting electronics manufacturers from selling products in the EU that contain mercury, lead or other heavy metals."
	So no lead-acid batteries in Europe... No Ni-Cad batteries, for that matter. (Cadmium is a heavy metal.) As GW Bush might say, "That dog won't hunt." I think what Rifkin means is that products containing those metals are banned unless there is a recycling fee attached.

Page 325:	"But in the U.S., for example, my sense is that..." and "Americans, we've already noted, are risk-taking people."
	Usage: Mixing "I" and the royal "we" in the same document is frowned on. (Rifkin does it in several places.)

Page 328:	"...all of the eighty-three people that had died in the Golden Square area ... had drank water from..."
	Verb tense: S/B "had drunk".

Page 331:	"The European Union hopes that by integrating the precautionary principle into international treaties and multinational agreements, it will become the unchallenged standard..."
	Dangling participle: S/B "hopes that, when the precautionary principle is integrated into".

Page 333:	"Nature is viewed as a myriad of symbiotic relationships, all embedded in a larger whole, of which they are an integral part."
	Number error: S/B "integral parts".

Page 334:	"The more powerful the science and technology are becoming, the more complex and unpredictable are the results and consequences."
	Usage: S/B "science and technology become".

Page 334:	"The analytical method reduces all phenomena to its most fundamental building blocks..."
	Number error: S/B "their".

Page 339:	"Each network is nested in networks above it while also made up of networks below it..."
	Here the word "nested" is used properly. See also pages 97 and 167.

Page 341:	"...the very fact that the EU has set benchmarks at all puts them far ahead..."
	Number error: S/B "it".

Page 342:	"Hydrogen can also be extracted from renewable energy crops and garbage."
	Without producing CO2? I think not.

Page 348:	"Unphased, Betty used her beak to wedge the wire in a crack and then bent it..."
	Homonym error: S/B "Unfazed".

Page 356:	"The [rare European Bison] once roamed all of Europe like its North American counterpart."
	Clumsy: S/B "as its counterpart did [in] North America" or something similar.

Page 362:	"For all of the conflicts between nationalities and governments in Europe over the course of the last two millennia, there is at least some common philosophical, theological, and cultural bonds that Europeans share..."
	Number error: S/B "there are".

Page 369:	"...or whether the fear generated by catastrophic activity creates a siege mentality and a feeling that everyone better fend for him- or herself in a war of survival."
	S/B "himself or herself" or "themselves"

Page 383:	"In stark contrast, only one in four Americans are anxious about the environment."
	Number error: S/B "is anxious".