Reviewed by James R. Olsen for Readers' Favorite

The End of Meaning: Cultural Change in America since 1945 by William A. Sikes is a tour de force in the breadth of American culture covered in his commentary, from religion and philosophy to literature and poetry, music and movies, letters and the internet, romance and sex, community and family, education and labor, war and politics, community and family, marking life’s journey, and what it all means. Meaning, in Sikes’s view, is meaning with a capital “M,” which gets to the purpose of life in the context of family, community, and society. Meaning rises to the metaphysical locus in the meaningful experience, “potentially transformative bonding us to others, to the larger worlds of culture or nature—perhaps even to some ultimate reality...” The book begins with Carl Jung’s story of a leader of the Hopi nation who describes his people in a correlative relationship with that ultimate reality and ends with Hopi coming-of-age rituals.

Within these bookends is a framework rooted thoroughly in Western culture and a Judeo-Christian religious outlook, with the 1950s American culture as the touchstone. William A. Sikes admits that this idealized culture restricted political and economic opportunity for women and racial minorities in a nation where homosexuality was a felony. As I read, I responded with “Yes, but” when faced, for example, with the ideal family model of the 1950s — one that was sometimes underpinned by domestic and child abuse. But, if the author dealt with all the “Yes buts,” the book would be overly long, and the point lost. The gain of political freedom, loosening of cultural constraints, and sexual freedom have come with a price. The End of Meaning points out that there is little meaning in grasping for wealth or seeing excitement as an end unto itself or when social justice has become the ultimate meaning of existence for many. The challenge Sikes gives the reader is not to go back but to take today’s culture and give it meaning.