America's Meltdown: The Lowest-Common-Denominator Society / Edition 1

by John B. Arden

Overview

As entertainers, corporations, and even the government pander to the lowest common denominator, American life becomes increasingly vicarious, prefabricated, and bereft of meaning. This book examines contemporary American consciousness, considering the factors that have driven society toward gossip and sensationalism at the cost of substance and depth.

Celebrity news, video games, cookie-cutter schools, and shopping, shopping, shopping. As entertainers, corporations, and even the government pander to the lowest common denominator, American life becomes increasingly vicarious, prefabricated, and bereft of meaning. This book examines contemporary American consciousness, considering the factors that have driven society toward gossip and sensationalism at the cost of substance and depth.

Arden discusses the growing epidemic of acrimony, superficiality, attention deficit disorder, and complaints of ennui. He targets the reasons why American children have expressed their confused rage with deadly weapons, why a president boasts that he earned Cs in college, and why society has drifted into craving entertainment laced with violence and cheap thrills. The book is provocative reading for concerned citizens, as well as for scholars and researchers involved with contemporary American culture and society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275976392
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	05/30/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

JOHN BOGHOSIAN ARDEN is Director of Training, Department of Psychiatry, Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, Vallejo, California. Among his earlier publications are Consciousness, Dreams, and Self and Science, Theology, and Consciousness (Praeger, 1998).

Table of Contents

The Lowest Common Denominator
Cyber Spaced
Vicarious Living
Infotainment
Retail Government
Lock and Load
The Bottom of the Barrel
Shopping and Dropping
Men and Women Are from Earth
Hyped Sports
Waging the Soul
Punching the Clock
McMedicine
Shrink Wrap
Dumbsizing the Schools
Mall Art
The Spiritual Supermarket
Transcending the Meltdown
Rebuilding the Future
Notes
Further Reading