Christopher Lasch
Christopher Lasch
ChristopherLaschwas an American historian, moralist, and social critic...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth1 June 1932
CountryUnited States of America
Christopher Lasch quotes about
order today overcoming
Today Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility but by the banality of the social order they have erected against it.
past looks prison-life
The prison life of the past looks in our own time like liberation itself.
hygiene danger remains
Personal disintegration remains always an imminent danger.
media addiction belief
The effect of the mass media is not to elicit belief but to maintain the apparatus of addiction.
silence intellectual important
The intellectual debility of contemporary conservatism is indicated by its silence on all important matters.
historical development clients
The same historical development that turned the citizen into a client transformed the worker from a producer into a consumer.
smile denial buttons
Ostensibly rigorous and realistic, contemporary conservatism is an ideology of denial. Its symbol is a smile button.
understanding conservative modern
Conservatives have no understanding of modern capitalism. They have a distorted understanding of the traditional values they claim to defend.
names speech trouble
George Orwell's contention was that it is a sure sign of trouble when things can no longer be called by their right names and described in plain, forthright speech.
new-experiences way advertising
Advertising serves not so much to advertise products as to promote consumption as a way of life. It 'educates' the masses into an unappeasable appetite not only for goods but for new experiences and personal fulfillment.
jobs blue class
Much of what is euphemistically known as the middle class, merely because it dresses up to go to work, is now reduced to proletarian conditions of existence. Many white-collar jobs require no more skill and pay even less than blue-collar jobs, conferring little status or security.
ghetto order class
We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle-class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general condition.
drug needs want
In our society, daily experience teaches the individual to want and need a never-ending supply of new toys and drugs.
family people modern
The attempt to redefine the family as a purely voluntary arrangement grows out of the modern delusion that people can keep all their options open all the time.