Greenwood Publishing Group : America's Meltdown

America's Meltdown
The Lowest-Common-Denominator Society
John Boghosian Arden

0-275-97639-4/978-0-275-97639-2

Description

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.

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).

List Price: $62.95 Pages: 240 Publication: 5/30/2003

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ISBN	Title	Price
0-275-97639-4 978-0-275-97639-2	America's Meltdown	$62.95
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