Christopher Lasch

In our society, daily experience teaches the individual to want and need a never-ending supply of new toys and drugs. ”

Ideologies, however appealing, cannot shape the whole structure of perceptions and conduct unless they are embedded in daily experiences that confirm them. ”

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. ”

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. ”

The family wage has been eroded by the same developments that have promoted consumerism as a way of life. ”

Most women are pragmatists who have allowed extremists on the left and right to manipulate the family issue for their own purposes. ”

Instead of taking environmentalism away from the left, conservatives condemn it as a counsel of doom. ”

Environmentalism opposes reckless innovation and makes conservation the central order of business. ”

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. ”

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. ”