SOCIALCIDE by Leo J Battenhausen
SOCIALCIDE
How America is Loving Itself to Death
by Leo J Battenhausen
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KIRKUS REVIEW
A New Jersey clinical social worker warns against a satanically orchestrated, technology-driven narcissistic evil overtaking an increasingly godless country.
Battenhausen (Defeating Depression: The Calm and Sense Way to Find Happiness and Satisfaction, 2011) defines Socialcide as loving ourselves to death and says that Satan has been on a roll since 1978—“the year the beast and the creator of Socialcide signed his plan to seduce people into killing themselves emotionally, and destroying all that is good and loving in the world.” That was the year, he notes, of the first home video games and cellular mobile phones—the devil’s tools for spreading narcissism. “[P]eople born between 1978 and 2000 are more narcissistic than people born into every other generation in history,” he laments. Common social virtues, basic morality, face-to-face communication and caring about others have been swept aside as the self-absorbed young immerse themselves in cyber realms. The plan is to “[s]top communication and replace it with technology,” Battenhausen says, and to turn people into machines. Some of these terminally narcissistic imps, stripped of humanity, will and have become monsters. He offers as examples young mass murderers—the worst of the worst from Columbine to Sandy Hook—with penchants for creepy websites and violent video games. Others, sinking deeper into narcissistic cocoons, resent that their superiority is not recognized. They are disrespectful to teachers and contemptuous of parents who may themselves be narcissists and uninvolved in their children’s lives. And there is no God anywhere. Even without accepting Battenhausen’s fundamental thesis that Satan is running the show, it’s hard to argue with his powerfully presented case that too many children are growing up in horribly dysfunctional ways. This eminently readable but overlong book could be cut by a hundred pages without damage to the author’s message that belief in God and better parenting are the only salvation. Dogs, as it turns out, loom large in the author’s appraisal of what’s still good in the world. Dog is God spelled backward for a reason, he suggests. And does the slavish adoration we get from these creatures feed our narcissism? Clearly the author, who has four Saint Bernards, doesn’t think so.
Passionate and provocative, with or without devilment.
Pub Date: Oct. 7th, 2014
ISBN: 978-1939761279
Page count: 484pp
Publisher: Faith Books and More
Program: Kirkus Indie
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23rd, 2014
