“The model of ownership, in a society organized round mass consumption, is addiction.”
Society
“The family wage has been eroded by the same developments that have promoted consumerism as a way of life.”
FamilyAll Quotes by Christopher Lasch
“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.”
Society“We are all revolutionaries now, addicts of change.”
Change“Ostensibly rigorous and realistic, contemporary conservatism is an ideology of denial. Its symbol is a smile button.”
Smile“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.”
Family“In our society, daily experience teaches the individual to want and need a never-ending supply of new toys and drugs.”
Experience“Most of these alternative arrangements, so-called, arise out of the ruins of marriages, not as an improvement of old fashioned marriage.”
Marriage“A growing awareness of the depth of popular attachment to the family has led some liberals to concede that family is not just a buzzword for reaction.”
Family“It is the logic of consumerism that undermines the values of loyalty and permanence and promotes a different set of values that is destructive of family life.”
Family“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.”
Family“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.”
Family“The hope of a new politics does not lie in formulating a left-wing reply to the right-it lies in rejecting conventional political categories.”
Hope“The family wage has been eroded by the same developments that have promoted consumerism as a way of life.”
Family“Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.”
Success“Conservatives sense a link between television and drugs, but they do not grasp the nature of this connection.”
Nature“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.”
Family“Drugs are merely the most obvious form of addiction in our society. Drug addiction is one of the things that undermines traditional values.”
Society“A society that has made 'nostalgia' a marketable commodity on the cultural exchange quickly repudiates the suggestion that life in the past was in any important way better than life today.”
Society“The last three decades have seen the collapse of the family wage system.”
Family“Most women are pragmatists who have allowed extremists on the left and right to manipulate the family issue for their own purposes.”
Family