I think it made alright points, but it is prosaic and dated. I found no insights I can take with me to see the world with more depth, no insights delivered better here than somewhere else you've probably already seen. Not Lasch's fault since this book came out in 1979.
The very best of the points I caught are said a more poignant way in TLP blog posts, Capitalist Realism and Anna and Dasha themselves (also Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl LOL). If I could go back in time I would feel comfortable skipping this title and I'd recommend others to do the same (in spite of how memed it is!!!). Even just by hanging out in these circles online you're already absorbing what it has to say in a deeper way than it delivers.
The middle chapters were especially a slog. I think the really low point was the chapter on sports. The education chapter was awful and shows a lack of appreciation for hard sciences (sorry I know this sounds reddit but his most prominent measuring stick for how good people's education is is their familiarity with literature and legislature). The chapter on sex was I guess good-intentioned, just appallingly out-of-date. I don't think Lasch could have imagined incels. In the worst parts he comes off to me as the moralist haranguing about how meaning has been lost and just things aren't the way they used to be. Except, again, he's complaining about how things had degraded 40 years ago. To make things worse he's often not even using his own words: big parts of the book are a string of quotations strung together with glue commentary.
I guess one good aspect of the book is that he tries to find turning points and causes to ascribe to the cultural phenomena he observes. Some things that come to mind:
- mass-migration of backwards people into the country in the 1800s drove states to impose (impossible) educational standards on kids which "Americanized" them but set the ball rolling for replacing the family with the state. - Selective Service and wars with drafts made people want to go to school to not get killed, which had the side effect of further changing the nature of education. - Technological advances separate people from the goods they produce which had the effect of commodifying white-collar workers and created the individualist self-promotion middle-management rat race we see today - Development of specialist cultures infantilize people and make them feel unfit to regulate their own lives without expert support.
Maybe this book was really good and forward-thinking in its time, it's just shriveled up and obsolete now. Maybe I have just been spoiled by the people that Lasch influenced.
Another thing that might be going on is that I just got pleb filtered and the whole book went over my head. RIP
The very best of the points I caught are said a more poignant way in TLP blog posts, Capitalist Realism and Anna and Dasha themselves (also Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl LOL). If I could go back in time I would feel comfortable skipping this title and I'd recommend others to do the same (in spite of how memed it is!!!). Even just by hanging out in these circles online you're already absorbing what it has to say in a deeper way than it delivers.
The middle chapters were especially a slog. I think the really low point was the chapter on sports. The education chapter was awful and shows a lack of appreciation for hard sciences (sorry I know this sounds reddit but his most prominent measuring stick for how good people's education is is their familiarity with literature and legislature). The chapter on sex was I guess good-intentioned, just appallingly out-of-date. I don't think Lasch could have imagined incels. In the worst parts he comes off to me as the moralist haranguing about how meaning has been lost and just things aren't the way they used to be. Except, again, he's complaining about how things had degraded 40 years ago. To make things worse he's often not even using his own words: big parts of the book are a string of quotations strung together with glue commentary.
I guess one good aspect of the book is that he tries to find turning points and causes to ascribe to the cultural phenomena he observes.
Some things that come to mind:
- mass-migration of backwards people into the country in the 1800s drove states to impose (impossible) educational standards on kids which "Americanized" them but set the ball rolling for replacing the family with the state.
- Selective Service and wars with drafts made people want to go to school to not get killed, which had the side effect of further changing the nature of education.
- Technological advances separate people from the goods they produce which had the effect of commodifying white-collar workers and created the individualist self-promotion middle-management rat race we see today
- Development of specialist cultures infantilize people and make them feel unfit to regulate their own lives without expert support.
Maybe this book was really good and forward-thinking in its time, it's just shriveled up and obsolete now. Maybe I have just been spoiled by the people that Lasch influenced.
Another thing that might be going on is that I just got pleb filtered and the whole book went over my head. RIP