America's Meltdown: The Lowest-Common-Denominator Society

(Hardback)

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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.

Reviews

"A damning indictment of our mass media's cynical exploitation of the crudest impulses in the human psyche."-Ben H. Bagdikian author, The Media Monopoly
"Arden addresses problems that are at least worrisome, perhaps ominous, and that we ignore at our peril."-Noam Chomsky
"Arden is one of the millions who doesn't want what's oozing out of our TV screens. Fortunately for all of us, he's taken the time to explain why the system isn't working for all of us--and that we can do something about it."-Danny Schechter Executive Editor, The Media Channel
"Nothing short of an urgent wake-up call to sit up, take notice of and do something about the morally, intellectually and emotionally corrosive effect unchecked corporate power, operating overtly and covertly, has had over every aspect of our lives."-Montague Ullman, M.D.
None of Arden's observations is new, but he presents them coherently and convincingly, and thoughtful readers will find little to disagree with.-ForeWord Magazine
Written in a trenchant style yet employing vernacular befitting a pop psychologist, this is a scathing critique of the rampant vulgarity, violence, and voyeurism in contemporary US mass culture, rooted in the cash nexus of corporate capitalism....Highly recommended. All levels and libraries.-Choice
"None of Arden's observations is new, but he presents them coherently and convincingly, and thoughtful readers will find little to disagree with."-ForeWord Magazine
"Written in a trenchant style yet employing vernacular befitting a pop psychologist, this is a scathing critique of the rampant vulgarity, violence, and voyeurism in contemporary US mass culture, rooted in the cash nexus of corporate capitalism....Highly recommended. All levels and libraries."-Choice

Author Bio

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).