Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium | Dick Meyer

Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium | Dick Meyer | Thank you Mr Meyer.

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Why We Hate Us: Am...

	Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium Dick Meyer Crown, 2008 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Americans are as safe, well fed, securely sheltered, long-lived, free, and healthy as any human beings who have ever lived on the planet. But we are down on America. So why do we hate us? According to Dick Meyer, the following items on this (much abbreviated) list are some of the contributors to our deep disenchantment with our own culture:

Cell-phone talkers broadcasting the intimate details of their lives in public spaces
Worship of self-awareness, self-realization, and self-fulfillment
T-shirts that read, ?Eat Me?
Facebook, MySpace, and kids being taught to market themselves
High-level cheating in business and sports
Reality television and the cosmetic surgery boom
Multinational corporations that claim, ?We care about you.?
The decline of organic communities
A line of cosmetics called ?S.L.U.T.?
The phony red state?blue state divide
The penetration of OmniMarketing into OmniMedia and the insinuation of both into every facet of our lives

You undoubtedly could add to the list with hardly a moment?s thought. In Why We Hate Us, Meyer absolutely nails America?s early-twenty-first-century mood disorder. He points out the most widespread carriers of the why-we-hate-us germs, including the belligerence of partisan politics that perverts our democracy, the decline of once common manners, the vulgarity of Hollywood entertainment, the superficiality and untrustworthiness of the news media, the cult of celebrity, and the disappearance of authentic neighborhoods and voluntary organizations (the kind that have actual meetings where one can hobnob instead of just clicking in an online contribution).

Meyer argues?with biting wit and observations that make you want to shout, ?Yes! I hate that too!??that when the social, spiritual, and political turmoil that followed the sixties collided with the technological and media revolution at the turn of the century, something inside us hit overload. American culture no longer reflects our own values. As a result, we are now morally and existentially tired, disoriented, anchorless, and defensive. We hate us and we wonder why.

Why We Hate Us reveals why we do and also offers a thoughtful and uplifting prescription for breaking out of our current morass and learning how to hate us less. It is a penetrating but always accessible Culture of Narcissism for a new generation, and it carries forward ideas that resounded with readers in bestsellers such as On Bullshit and Bowling Alone.

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Journalist and Author Dick Meyer Sees Us as a Country That Has Succumbed to Learned Helplessness

Writing with thoughtful intelligence and keen insight, Dick Meyer, author of Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium, is sincerely haunted by several questions regarding our country's current malaise: Why are so many of us lonely? Why are so many of us depressed and angry? Why are so many of us defensive and paranoid? Why are so many of us distrustful of everyone? Why are we so willing to accept phoniness and ineptness from others, including our government? Why have so many of us surrendered to a condition of learned helplessness and apathy in which not only do we not know what questions we should be asking to solve our depression, we don't even have anyone to confide in should we know the questions we should be asking.

To answer these questions about our country's collective low-self-esteem and paralyzing depression, Meyer tells us a story about ourselves. The story is about a country that has lost common, shared values and virtues, a country that having lost community has replaced communal bonds with fierce tribes and clans that aggrandize themselves while demonizing their "opponents."

The beginning of this story is for Meyer, "Phase One," the Aquarian Promise of Free Love during the 1960s in which there were no boundaries to the freedom, the ego, the sense of self. This Unlimited freedom without a moral roadmap resulted in hedonism, egotism, and ultimately narcissism.

Instead of maturing into responsible adults who give and take from a healthy community and family, we become a bunch of whining, materialistic egotists, our inflated expectations of "selfhood" inevitably being dashed and resulting in greater and greater discontent, bitterness, and resentment.

The 1960s was the beginning of "The Great Me Project," which resulted in little islands competing against each other rather than a healthy community, which could provide the only source of our sanity--"social capital"--the sense of belonging, intimacy, and authenticity that healthy communities provide.

Absent this belonging, intimacy, and authenticity, we fear we are battling against forces by ourselves and we must also be on guard, living defensively against predators, market scams, phony politicians, and the slew of B.S. that has become so ubiquitous.

To compound our disaffected, isolated selves, our brains have become overwhelmed in the face of "Phase Two," the Technology Revolution that dizzies us with so many contraptions and messages that we have lost our grounding, our core, our focus. We don't know if we're coming or going and we feel we're about to explode.

His call for community, less materialism, and more courageous standards for moral absolutes might be too late, but at least he is still kicking and fighting.

While much of the material was familiar to me from other books, including the terse, more focused Shows About Nothing: Nihilism in Popular Culture from The Exorcist to Seinfeld by Thomas S. Hibbs and while he tries to cover too much ground as Meyer issues a diatribe about a "big menu of creepy irritations," Meyer succeeds at telling us a cohesive narrative about our popular culture to show us the trajectory leading to our current condition of learned helplessness, loneliness, partisan humbug, and mistrust.

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Thank you Mr Meyer.

Thank you Mr. Meyer, for writing a book that was equally entertaining and enlightening; sarcastic and funny but also deeply thoughtful, historically supported and without bias, arrogance or condescendence.

Your book highlights the very things that are turning our society into one without a soul. On all levels of society we are distancing ourselves from each other, individually and collectively. You illustrate how the little things that really bug us need to be given more attention than just a complaint to a companion or a roll of the eyes. You give examples of the every day absurdities that we may notice, or may be completely oblivious to, that are not so insignificant and why we need to open our eyes and our minds to how those things are really effecting us. You explain with great insight how and why we are the society that we are today and why change is necessary for the true happiness of tomorrow.

What I love about Mr Meyers book is how he explains that it isn't just socially or morally better to be kind, to use proper manners, to take time to really know our families and the people in our lives, or to question and have the confidence to say "enough is enough" or the word "no". He gently, but effectively, points out that it is crucial to the success of our future society that we do all those things and more. Mr Meyer reminds us that the power is within each individual to effect others and that it can grow to effect all of us.

This book should be on every college campus in America. Mr Meyer makes us realize that we have a responsibility to ourselves and those who come after us to be a little less selfish and really consider that what we do and say has consequences that effect more than just us and why that matters. This book makes us realize that we (individuals, families, communities, companies and everyone in between) should all make a commitment to recognize the need for and create more, in Robert Putnam's words, "social capital".

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It Provides Definitive Proof ... Misery has and Loves lots of Company!

I did not know where to begin with Why We Hate Us. My initial reaction was to anticipate a diatribe from an extremist with a hidden agenda. I found some things with which I could critique and disagree ... only to discover subsequent paragraphs revealed the author had a scorched-earth platform. No prisoners were being taken. For this reason, the book has my endorsement.

Why We Hate Us is intriguing, provocative, and unique. If you have been disappointed with any person, place, animal, or thing ... you will discover your misery has plenty of company. I am rating it four stars, not because it is poorly written, referenced, or any of the usual suspects. ... But because I am still internalizing the information learned...

One flaw in the book (for me) is that it comprises an interminable list of things that cause discomfort, disgust, and (in some cases) rage in daily life. A more accurate title for the book should have been: Why We are Frustrated with Many Fellow Citizens. It is understandable why the author chose Why We Hate Us (it is succinct and has immediate shock value).

Mr Meyer understands Americans are privileged. He also realizes why we are discontented. Some examples are on page twelve. Through the use of a Harris Poll, he lists these categories: Military, universities and colleges, medicine, Supreme Court, organized religion, executive branch of government, major companies, organized labor, The Press, and congress.

Not one of these groups has fifty percent approval from the American public. The lowest was congress (ten percent) and the highest was the military (forty six percent). Overall average was twenty five percent. At the end of the book I was happy, pleased, and relieved to read the author's ideas about how we can "hate ourselves, less". He states: "It is necessary to find and nurture authentic commitments in private and community life. This means constantly making thoughtful and unselfish choices about matters both essential and seemingly trivial." I could not agree more.

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Dysfunctional culture likely to remain so, despite vague discontent (3.25 *s)

The author makes clear that the modern social world is characterized by isolationism of its members and "meism." The fact that such a society does not function harmoniously or that many are upset by those developments is hardly surprising. The author, in a work that draws upon Putnam's "Bowling Alone," but more personally and anecdotally, recounts an entire litany of socially dysfunctional behaviors: boorishness, indifference, phoniness, etc. Face-to-face communities that once perpetuated shared values and some degree of tolerance have largely disappeared. The vast majority of us are ensconced in manicured suburbia surrounded by a plethora of personal electronic devices: computers, cell phones, iPods, PDAs, DVDs, etc. With the prevalence of these devices, few are inclined to interact with a neighbor, let alone a community. Even if there is the desire, town centers and the corner bar are constructions of the past. These developments have had profound consequences for our society.

According to the author, "OmniMedia" and "OmniMarketing" are all pervasive in our culture with relentless impact on our traditions. There are so many media options that viewers and users, using cable and online sources, can tailor their selection of information and concepts that they wish to be true. Truth has been transformed into self-selected "truthiness." In addition, the entertainment industry and media have completely undermined conventional mores with salacious and provocative content.

Advertising and marketing have been driving our consumption oriented economy for almost a century. Now, that shaping of minds has seeped its way down as a tool for individuals. Creating a marketable "you," replete with images and the right credentials, is part of what the author calls "selfism." The well-rounded citizen is a person of the past. The author notes that marketing and self-promotion often slip into phoniness and deliberate misinformation.

With the pervasiveness of truthiness and selfism, it's hardly surprising that American is depicted as being polarized. The news media is a large proponent of that notion, though the author insists that view is more superficial than real.

Much of the author's description of our culture is inarguable. Loutishness, indifference, phoniness, and political screamers are everywhere for the seeing. However, the author's claim that we hate our culture is quite vague. Does a political ideologue hate the fact that he or she is an ideologue or that others do not agree. Does a marketer hate his own slippery advertising as much as he does the next guy's? Does outrage at the depiction of women as fast and loose stop the purchasing of goods or buying tickets to entertainment? Should we be concerned with the hate of convenience?

The author's ideas for reclaiming our culture from its current state of affairs seem most inadequate. The notion that a few random individuals that choose to operate with integrity and the highest moral purpose will put in a dent in modern trends seems disingenuous. It is a fact that corporate values dominate our society. People are no longer primarily citizens; we've all become consumers and commodities. We operate according to self interest. We seek to buy cheap to the disadvantage of our fellow men if need be, but to sell ourselves high to the exclusion of others. Where is the concern for downsizing and off shoring and the devastation to families and communities, beyond those directly affected? Do we hate that?

Yes, much about our culture is dysfunctional. There may be vague dissatisfaction in some circles, but hate of our culture is doubtful. The ability of corporations to drive our culture and to subtly persuade us to like it is increasing every day. The citizens of the US are largely unequipped with either the tools or the knowledge to fully understand our culture, let alone repair it.

The book is a nice overview of our culture for those unable to understand what they see. Absolutely nothing new about our culture is presented; the observant person has seen all that the author has, and more. And the book is somewhat repetitious and tedious to read. One suspects that we are a lot further away from righting our culture than the author suggests. The forces of hate or discontent are hardly significant enough or rational enough to drive changes in a direction that would be beneficial to the society as a whole.

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Good, but doesn't go far enough

This is a good start. But I was disappointed that Dick Meyer doesn't dig deeper. A lot of his "answers" just beg the question if you ask me. I found he was good at diagnosing the problem--as are many pundits and observers these days--but short on understanding their true depth.

He gives us the laundry list of ills inflicting us right now--failed political systems, endemic rudeness, the death of civic responsibility, our vile popular culture--and does not see the thread that links it all. That thread is the complete dominance of unfettered capitalism. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, our sole purpose in America has been to make money, at a faster and faster rate. "Values," such that they are, are only taught when they're seen to further expedite the chase of the buck.

No, there's nothing wrong with capitalism, but there is something wrong when capitalism is our only national goal, and it is now, no matter what some apologists may claim. People who think about nothing except how to acquire more material things are not going to be civil-minded, learned, courteous, moral or ethical. There's no reason to be. In fact, those things are just impediments to the pursuit of happine$$.

This is happening everywhere, of course, but nowhere as much as the U.S. Europe is struggling to keep a lid on rampant, unchecked capitalism--their blend of "soft socialism" with regulated capitalism seems to be working better than any other model, so far at least. Countries that most eagerly follow the U.S. down the road to free market mania--Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and now China and India--are starting to have the same social ills of the United States.

Rather than chapter after chapter reciting ills we already know about and citing his columnist peers and their skin-deep "analyses," I would have like to have been a deeper social-economic analysis, as well as discussions from historians and yes, philosophers. For a deeper look at our nation's ills I guess we have to turn to the likes of Thomas Frank, whose unblinking look at our national soul can be depressing, but accurate.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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