The model of ownership, in a society organized round mass consumption, is addiction. Christopher Lasch More Quotes by Christopher Lasch More Quotes From Christopher Lasch The work of art is a scream of freedom. Christopher Lasch art-is scream art Most people no longer live in nuclear families at all. Christopher Lasch nuclear-families nuclear people Adherents of the new religious right reject the separation of politics and religion, but they bring no spiritual insights to politics. Christopher Lasch separation religious spiritual The question of the family now divides our society so deeply that the opposing sides cannot even agree on a definition of the institution they are arguing about. Christopher Lasch our-society definitions sides When liberals finally grasped the strength of popular feeling about the family, they cried to appropriate the rhetoric and symbolism of family values for their own purposes. Christopher Lasch popular-song symbolism feelings Conservatives have no understanding of modern capitalism. They have a distorted understanding of the traditional values they claim to defend. Christopher Lasch modern conservative understanding In an individualistic culture, the narcissist is God's gift to the world. In a collectivist society, the narcissist is God's gift to the collective. Christopher Lasch narcissist culture world News represents another form of advertising, not liberal propaganda. Christopher Lasch advertising journalism news It is no longer an unwritten law of American capitalism that industry will attempt to maintain wages at a level that allows a single wage to support a family. Christopher Lasch support wages law It is advertising and the logic of consumerism that governs the depiction of reality in the mass media. Christopher Lasch logic media reality Once women begin to question the inevitability of their subordination and to reject the conventions formerly associated with it, they can no longer retreat to the safety of those conventions. The woman who rejects the stereotype of feminine weakness and dependence can no longer find much comfort in the clich? that all men are beasts. She has no choice except to believe, on the contrary, that men are human beings, and she finds it hard to forgive them when they act like animals. Christopher Lasch animal men believe The left has lost touch with popular opinion, thereby making it possible for the right to present itself as the party of common sense. Christopher Lasch lost-friendship common-sense party Ideologies, however appealing, cannot shape the whole structure of perceptions and conduct unless they are embedded in daily experiences that confirm them. Christopher Lasch embedded shapes perception Liberals subscribe to the new flexible, pluralistic definition of the family; their defense of families carries no conviction. Christopher Lasch conviction definitions defense It is a tribute to the peculiar horror of contemporary life that it makes the worst features of earlier times -- the stupefaction of the masses, the obsessed and driven lives of the bourgeoisie -- seem attractive by comparison. Christopher Lasch bourgeoisie horror peculiar The same historical development that turned the citizen into a client transformed the worker from a producer into a consumer. Christopher Lasch citizens development historical A child's appetite for new toys appeal to the desire for ownership and appropriation: the appeal of toys comes to lie not in their use but in their status as possessions. Christopher Lasch desire lying children The proper reply to right wing religiosity is not to insist that politics and religion don't mix. This is the stock response of the left. Christopher Lasch religion-and-politics right-wing wings Today Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility but by the banality of the social order they have erected against it. Christopher Lasch overcoming today order I despise the cowardly clinging to life, purely for the sake of life, that seems so deeply ingrained in the American temperament. Christopher Lasch clinging despise sake
