Ego and Soul : The Modern West in Search of Meaning

by Carroll, John

• ISBN13: 9780732259907
• ISBN10: 0732259908
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-11-01
• Publisher: Harpercollins Australia

Summary

Is the modern West lost in a crisis of meaning? Or are events like those surrounding the death of Princess Diana, signs of something else? Could they be the expressions of the drive to find a myth we can all believe in? Ego and Soul is an engaging and lucid look at where Western society is heading as we approach the new millennium. Modern preoccupations such as work, sport, computers, cars, and the celebrity cults of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley are sifted through classical themes as John Carroll finds evidence we are in our everyday lives inhaling that deepening sacred breath.

Table of Contents

Modern Western culture -- five theses	1	(10)
Part I. Principal battle grounds	11	(72)
Work	13	(14)
Sport	27	(17)
The lower middle class and popular culture	44	(19)
Family--intimacy--friendship	63	(20)
Part II. The two-pronged threat: nihilism -- consumerism	83	(68)
The upper middle class and high culture	85	(19)
The modern university	104	(14)
Shopping -- consumerism as consolation	118	(18)
Tourism -- the profane quest	136	(15)
Part III. Strategic gains	151	(62)
Personal computers	153	(10)
Motor cars	163	(8)
Democracy	171	(16)
Nature -- anima mundi	187	(15)
The Diana cult	202	(11)
Part IV. Prospects	213	(42)
The end of the capitalist-bourgeois golden age	215	(16)
The deepening sacred breath	231	(24)
Notes	255	(14)
Bibliography	269	(6)
Index	275