America's Meltdown: The Lowest Common Denominator Society

America's Meltdown: The Lowest Common Denominator Society John Boghosian Arden. Westport: Praeger, 2003. Contemporary narratives of social decline commonly originate from points of view hostile to egalitarianism, individualism, relativism, and secular humanism. Think of Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987), Robert Bork's Slouching Toward Bethlehem (1996), and William Bennett's The Death of Outrage (1998). America's Meltdown, written by the director of training for Department of Psychiatry at Kaiser Permanente in Vallejo, California, springs from more liberal impulses. Think of Bill McKibben's The End of Nature (1990) and Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone (2000). With a simplification that reminds one of the shouting radio programs, John B. Arden conceptualizes the presumed ongoing meltdown through the all-purpose concept of "the lowest common denominator" (called "LCD" throughout). Arden never defines a literal descriptive or diagnostic content of this arithmetic-based metaphor, simply using it to condemn any lamentable social trend. The reader will quickly learn to think "BAD/MUST STOP!" whenever the term appears. The elasticity of this monoconceptual approach will frustrate the more pluralistically minded. What, then, is so bad about our social world? Without listing them all, current maladies include the seductions of the Internet, vicarious living through television, domestic terrorism, schoolhouse shootings, gun ownership, video games, gambling, spiritual supermarket religion, political soft money, and overly publicized sports. In the diagnostic final chapter on "Rebuilding the Future," Arden calls for remvigoration by the "the basic principles of a healthy society, including compassion, tolerance, and flexibility" (193). Other broad goals called for include "responsible entertainment," "real news," conservation, disarmament, expanded health care, and greater emphasis on prevention. The book's final sentence reads, "A healthy future requires you to participate with others in constructing a society of clarity as we usher in the new millennium" (212). Readers can learn some things from this book, which does range over numerous ideas and sources, but the quality of the scholarship will often frustrate the desire to go further. The book does not attempt to synthesize the best-known and documented treatments of its topics. For example, in attacking the aggressive use of computers in early education, Arden fails to mention Clifford Stoll's best-selling Silicon Snake oil (1995). In discussing "the spiritual supermarket," he fails to refer to Wade C. Roof's Spiritual Marketplace (1999) or Richard Cimino and Don Lattin's Shopping for Faith (1998). Because this book is about declining standards, one should not ignore its failure to meet expectations. One grammatical challenge on page 3 exposes a typical problem in the book. Arden writes, "we spend approximately a quarter of the time socializing today than [sic] we did 35 years ago." If "than" is supposed to be relative, then there is a missing "less" -which would mean that we spend a quarter time less than we did. If "than" is a misprint for "that," then we would be spending a mere 25 percent of the expended spent 35 years ago, or a drop of 75 percent. …