America's Meltdown

by Arden, John Boghosian

• ISBN13: 9780275976392
• ISBN10: 0275976394
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-05-30
• Publisher: Praeger Pub Text

Summary

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.

Author Biography

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 Meltdown	1	(16)
Cyberspaced	17	(14)
Vicarious Living	31	(16)
Infotainment	47	(18)
Retail Government	65	(16)
Lock and Load	81	(10)
The Bottom of the Barrel	91	(8)
Shopping and Dropping	99	(12)
Men and Women Are from Earth	111	(10)
Hyped Sports	121	(10)
Waging the Soul	131	(14)
Punching the Clock	145	(6)
McMedicine	151	(8)
Shrink Wrap	159	(6)
Dumbsizing the Schools	165	(10)
Mall Art	175	(10)
The Spiritual Supermarket	185	(8)
Rebuilding the Future	193	(20)
Notes	213	(16)
Further Reading	229	(2)
Index	231