Klicka på en bild för att gå till Google Book Search.
|
Laddar... Egotopia: Narcissism and the New American Landscapeav John Miller
   Ingen/inga Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken.  antimuzak | Nov 28, 2006 |  inga recensioner | lägg till en recension
This work aims to identify the physical ugliness that defines and homogenizes America's cities, suburbs and countryside. Believing that prevailing assessments of the American landscape are inadequate and injudicious, the author calls into question the conventional wisdom of environmentalists, urban planners, and architects alike. In this examination of what he sees as the ugliness that is the American consumer society, he argues that our aesthetic condition can be fully understood only by explorers of the metaphoric environment. Metaphorically, the ugliness of America's great suburban sprawl is the physical manifestation of our increasing narcissim - our egotopia. The ubiquity of psychotherapy as a medium promoting self-indulgence has deified private man as it has demonized public man. The New American Landscape, Miller argues, is no longer the physical manifestation of public and communal values. Instead, its commercialism is a projection of private fantasies and narcissistic self-indulgence. Individual interest and private passions can no longer tolerate, nor even recognize, aesthetic concerns in such a landscape dedicated to uncompromising notions of utility. Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
Pågående diskussionerIngen/ingaPopulära omslag 
 Google Books — Laddar...GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)304.2Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Factors affecting social behavior Human ecologyKlassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg: (3.5)
Är det här du? |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1
Miller's examination of the United States in the last decade of the twentieth century is devastating, and like the good physician, having diagnosed the disease and its causes, he does not fail to prescribe the cure. He makes brilliantly clear that the egotistical embrace of private sensibilities in the new American landscape, the narcissistic self-indulging that has replaced the self-transcendence of earlier days, is illuminated by the ubiquity of, indeed, the legitimisation and institutionalisation of, the "quick fix". In the anomic world in which people have grown out of touch with one another, such as therapy, Miller shows, serves as a principal mechanism for the transformation of public into private values and the development of the New Man. The result has been the emergence of the megaself, a perverted individualism negating moral, ethical, and religious constraints on individual behavior.
Miller writes incisively on the ugliness of our consumer society, anatomizing in detail the inner ugliness of egotopia, the debilitating defect of collective character that has the ca-pacity of ultimately destroying the last vestiges of aesthetic consciousness and civility. Our own worst selves, set loose and unrestrained, may yet put an end to a creature and a culture that once held such high promise.
The present American landscape, which is "ultimately a manifestation of the inner chaos that defines the New Man--rampant ego, blatant narcissistic self-indulgence," he would replace with an alternative landscape, an American public landscape defined not by market forces, but by "public and communal values even if its function were entirely and exclusively commercial." "Ultimately," Miller says, "the value of the public landscape would be precisely in proportion to its noncommercial appearance and visual character."