This is a well-written and valuable book. Coming from a left-leaning perspective, Lasch’s critiques of what most Americans would consider the foundations of “liberal” politics are novel and cutting, even over 40 years after the publication of this book. For someone who doesn’t consider themselves as allied with either stream of mainline American political thought, it’s amazing how much of the political dogmas you still might absorb. There were dozens of times reading this book where I encountered a perspective on a problem that I simply had never even heard of before, let alone considered. The stock liberal/conservative tropes are so drilled into my brain that I often found my self trying to place Lasch in some kind of paradigm, only to remember that his whole project here is to undermine that kind of thinking. Lasch is definitely acting as contrarian here, and I can’t say I agree with everything he says. His views on Feminism, while interesting and worthwhile, are almost certainly outdated at this point. But as someone who values argument for arguments sake, i found a ton to think about in this book.

Most relevant to my life, and I would expect for most people in their late 20s early 30s, are Lasch’s views on education, sexuality, and the idea of societal progress. I had taken it for granted my whole life without really being conscious of it that public, state-run education systems were a flawed but commendable ideal - Lasch in just a few pages demonstrates the obvious problems with this ideal; the homogenized standards that hold everyone, regardless of ability, interest, or personality to the same bureaucratic standard; the degradation of educational standards that comes from pushing so many different people through the system; the idea that the school is now the fulcrum of a child’s entire life and that it’s held responsible not just for their academic education but also for their physical fitness, mental health, even practical skills like keeping house, cooking, repairing things etc.
In the chapter on sexuality, Lasch trots out some of the Freudian mumbo jumbo that sometimes sneaks into the book that I don’t care enough about to truly understand - at best these segments were a kind of surrealistic intermission from the rest of the book with nightmarish descriptions of vaginas with teeth and women with man-crushing legs. But I do think Lasch’s insight into the emptiness of the sexual environment is still pertinent. So many people of my generation, myself included, have been hardened and disheartened by modern dating, bulwarked as it is by dating apps, social networks, face-tuned photos, and ghosting. In many ways this situation couldn’t have been better designed to suit the narcissistic zeitgeist that Lasch is critiquing. For a while I’ve had the intimation that the economic and environment past and prognosis under which we grew up has scarred us in a way that pushed our generation into fickleness and unreliability, cultivating a “zen” feeling towards the temporary nature of relationships and external conditions, only as a coping mechanism against the ever-rising sensation of danger and instability.
All of this ties into Lasch’s main point which is that the left has too long been associated with, and drawn it’s inspiration from, an unbridled tendency towards “progress”, and that this progress, in the process of changing some truly outdated and disgusting societal problems, has also destroyed the things that have moored humanity since time immemorial. I came of age during the first Obama campaign and victory and found it super inspiring. I remember at that time the general tenor among the liberal adults around me was that the progressive ideal was coming to fruition. Of course that wasn’t true, both in the actions of the Obama administration once in office, and the shocking rebuke of this ideal when Trump was elected. I’m sure there are million things written about Trump as the manifestation of Lasch’s idea of narcissism, so I won’t wade into those deep waters. But left leaning folks have been been in the ideological wilderness for a while now, and I think letting go of this oppressive idea of “progress” could be a way out. One thing Lasch makes clear is, the “progress” we’ve talked about for so long is not that of the average person - it is instead that of cynical, exploitative capitalism, one of which’s most striking features is its ability to absorb any criticism and opposition into itself and use it against its dissidents.

What keeps Lasch relevant for me, is that despite his seemingly conservative views or retrograde inclinations, he is always clear about what the problem is here: capitalism and bureaucracy run rampant. If anything can draw the two sides of the political spectrum in America together, it’s this common enemy.

As a side note, it feels extremely timely reading this book after getting into Norm MacDonald over the last few months, mostly thru YouTube videos, and then after the comedians recent death. Through what I learned about him in interviews and such, MacDonald wouldn’t have called himself an anti-capitalist or leftist by any stretch, but I feel like he had a Laschian streak for sure; never following any party line, politically undefinable, aggressively down to earth and plain spoken, never afraid to touch the third rail of any issue. Despite differences of opinion or background I will always have an appreciation for brilliant, principled people. Lasch and Macdonald were both most certainly that. ( )

too good to lose half a star for this, but too much freud ( )

A couple times I almost tossed this aside, but then I rather liked it in the end.

At times it seemed ranty and overly focused on the 70s. At others, and sometimes simultaneously, it seemed like it could've been written last year and was a cogent criticism of modern society--in some ways worse in the exact ways the author criticized forty years ago.

Lasch deploys liberal and conservative criticism alike -- sounding almost Marxian in his criticisms of capitalism at times and Reaganesque in his comments about the family at others -- but not incoherently.

I went in to this book unaware of the book's details but with a vague notion that it was from a conservative point of view. So, while disorienting at first, I appreciated Lasch's ecumenical approach -- I don't think either side has all the answers and there are surely things to criticize American capitalism for as well as to praise the American family for.

Lasch ties these disparate critical threads together in a persuasive criticism of a decade that is, for all its seeming differences, it similar to our own. In some ways, this was the most sobering realization for me -- that many of the legitimate criticisms he makes are still extant and arguably worse in more than a few cases today.

I read this a long time ago and don't remember a lot, but it is true most people are too self-involved. ( )

I really tried to stick this out. My reasons for being attracted to it, are that many of my jobs had narcissistic humans that I was involved with out of necessity, and, being able to see through them right away, and being puzzled that others weren't, I wished to try to understand them more. Well, this was not the book to help me do it. For one, it's just too dated; while it may have basically relevant truths about narcissists, they just didn't mesh with the reality of 2019. For two, it's written in a dry fashion, and is just not user-friendly. ( )