 | "Transforming American Culture" is a rather ambitious title for the concluding chapter in a book. A verb such as transforming is particularly interesting, since it has at least two meanings: as the agent that transforms those who enter into it; or as the object of change, that which is to be transformed. Presumably, the authors mean the latter. At least, as an objective, what we ought to be about. (Who is "we," here?)
Among the more insightful and delightful books about the shallowness of the 1980's is Barbara Ehrenreich's The Worst Years of Our Lives (See Shared References). See also Samuelson: The Good Life and its Discontents, and Brooks' Bobos in Paradise, also in the Shared References.
What is the "culture of separation" and the "culture of coherence"? If, presumably, we're trying to move from the former to the latter, aren't we caught in a kind of Catch-22, in that we can't even properly visualize a culture of coherence, so enmeshed are we in the separation that individualism entails? (This might go be good time to review the Glossary,not only for a better handle on this concluding chapter, but to better prepare you for the second asssignment.)
Among the terms you will not find there, but that is central to their thinking, is social ecology (p. 283). They do go on to say that this means roughly the same thing as moral ecology, which is in the Glossary, but that definition only refers you back to social ecology, that is not in the Glossary.
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