American Mania: When More Is Not Enough Essay

INTRODUCTION It takes immense courage to question something that has been so firmly etched into one’s mind or something that everyone accepts as normal, it also takes great insight to be able to see past the monotony and mundane details of life and observe something that is greatly and equally affecting a nation. Mr. Whybrow accomplishes this with great eloquence in his book American mania. Adam smith’s American dream of depth and desire† The book begins with the chapter titled â€Å"Adam smith’s American dream of depth and desire† in which Mr. Whybrow gives an account of his taxi ride on the way to the airport to catch a flight from Los Angles to New York, he tells his story in almost a poetic manner describing the myriad of scenes that he observes. He points out everything that makes him reflect on how rapidly the world is moving and how everyone is being swept away with this storm and how no one stops to think about where they’re actually headed and how everyone has less and less time for the small things in life, things which once were considered to be the essence of life. The author seeks to explain â€Å"the dramatic shift away from social concern and toward competitive self-interest that occurred during the closing decades of the 20th Century† (p. 257). Whybrow, himself a British immigrant, advances the hypothesis that Americans are a nation of â€Å"migrants† who are outfitted not just with the self-seeking genes but also with the restless, risk-taking genes of those who have risked all to look for a new land of opportunity. Whybrow argues that highly migrant people are novelty seekers, restless and optimistic risk-takers, CONCLUSION Whybrow’s theories are provocative because they not only revisit the possibility of psychoanalysis in the alliance of culture, speculating beyond the anthropology and identity politics that all cultures are just as advantageous, but also challenge us to reassess the insufficiency of our psychological descriptions. Identifying a culture as hectic or obsessed is somewhat useful in attempting to avoid the idea of national character but to propose a basic personality as the repository of a society’s values, from which individual character differentiates is a mammoth task Mr. Whybrow manages to make the reader question the values and beliefs that we have come to cherish so dearly. WORKS CITED Peter Whybrow (2006) American Mania: When More Is Not Enough. Retrieved on 18th October 2006 from : http://www.amazon.com/American-Mania-When-More-Enough/dp/0393059944