/lit/ - Literature

Lasch wrote this in 1979. It's amazing he wrote this decades before the rise of smartphones, computers, and social media.

>>14209923
This is a simplified version of Society of Spectacle. Debord already predicted that cumulation of capital would lead to domination of images and that spontaneous life and experience are forever lost.

>>14209943
shut the fuck up

>>14209946
no u

>>14209901
Lasch is based.
(Anti-marxist) Left-Traditionalism is deeply underrated and underserved.

I like The True And Only Heaven best

>>14209923
Can't relate

>>14210041
He was the guy who convinced me that there was room for a conservatism rooted in an anti-capitalist tradition. Though there have of course been thinkers who've written about this long before he did, Lasch was the gateway writer who redpilled me on that.

>>14210059
You'd like Troy Southgate and Alexander Dugin as well

>>14210056
I doubt you've conceived of a leftism that isn't Marxist or Woke, but that's fine. You're not required.

>>14210056
Please disregard >>14210079
I misread which one you replied to

>>14209901
I'm really interested in the project he suggests in The True and Only Heaven of rehabilitating the populist/producerist movements of the 19th century, if for no other reason than every other political tradition seems to have completely exhausted itself and the lack of social and economic works written by populists/producerists makes it seem sort of like the ideological equivalent of the unsettled american west, an almost-blank canvas for genuinely creative political minds to exercise their originality.

Also since Carlyle is sort of becoming a board meme, I don't want him to just become another meme reactionary writer that people reference on this board. Lasch was one of the few writers to appreciate Carlyle as a social critic and prophet, and not to either defang him by turning him into a literary figure or caricature him as an authoritarian. I think Carlyle threads (and there are gonna be a lot more of them in 2020) will be a good place to discuss Lasch and his ideas as well and to complicate the discussion

One of my favorite passages in Revolt of the Elites.

>>14210074
Thanks, I'l definitely check out those thinkers. Dugin looks especially interesting

>>14210115
I just finished that book a couple weeks ago. It's such a refreshing read as a conservative who's completely exhausted by the fusionists on one side and the frothing-at-the-mouth nationalists on the other. I especially enjoyed Lasch's discussion of Orestes Brownson and Thomas Paine. I never knew that early-19th century opposition toward Capitalism was so prevalent until reading Lasch's commentaries. This reason among many makes him a very valuable thinker.

I actually don't know much about Carlyle or why he's becoming a board meme (it's been a while since the last time I've been here.) Why do you think there will be more Carlyle threads as we enter 2020, and how does Lasch's ideas fit into that?

>>14209901
Single best book on diagnosing the mind of the modern western. Communism and conscience of west is also good by Sheen

You guys should read Marc Bloch's Feudal Society (two volumes, on libgen too), after having read Dugin, Southgate, Lasch and yes, Bookchin, I wanted to get a real understanding of what we lost if anything in the Enlightenment. Turns out we really deeply fucked up by embracing Liberalism and Capital, and knowing the real details of Medieval life and law and consciousness helped me realize just how bad Marxism actually is.

I like the subtitle of Bloch's first volume so much:
>The Growth And Ties Of Dependence

It's just so descriptive of how Feudal world was truly organic and ecological.

People know so fucking little about that era and just eat up the standard line that Feudalism is just awful.

I digress

>>14210132
>It's such a refreshing read as a conservative who's completely exhausted by the fusionists on one side and the frothing-at-the-mouth nationalists on the other.
I don't think I'm a conservative (more of an extremely alienated leftist) but I definitely empathise with that sentiment. The mainstream trends on both left and right are so utterly uninspiring that I hope it will spur people to look beyond left and right, and to explore the kind of stuff Lasch explores, that isn't easily catalogued by our conventional political labels.

>Why do you think there will be more Carlyle threads as we enter 2020, and how does Lasch's ideas fit into that?
Carlyle is a fascinating writer who became a real scapegoat in 20th century academia (unfairly I think) for his association with authoritarianism and "hero-worship". I think these kinds of interpretations of Carlyle, which are shared by his modern-day proponents as well as his critics, are misguided, completely missing the nuance of his thought. Carlyle's appeals to heroism aren't appeals to political leadership or any kind of cult of strength (which he abhorred). Rather, Carlyle's heroes, as Lasch rightly says are creatively powerful, but acknowledge their creativity and strength as a gift, as originating outside the self, which they are entrusted with by a higher power (of some sort).

Idk why he's popular all of a sudden though. I think Carlyle is sort of popular with online reactionaries, but like I say they read him following the caricature of his views invented by 20th century academics. That's why I'm hoping enough people are around in those threads who've read Carlyle on his own terms, who can give discussion of his works some nuance beyond "based traditionalism".

As for Lasch's relation to him, it was reading Lasch that made me realise how completely my own politics were formed unconsciously by my own Calvinist heritage. The chapter on Carlyle, Emerson, Edwards and James in The True and Only Heaven lays out a really fascinating lineage between these thinkers, how their thought has been informed by Calvinism and puritanism, with its unique concept of heroism. He gives a really nice summary of the Carlylean-Emersonian vision of the hero in the intro to the book and traces it back to Milton:
>For a Puritan like John Milton, "virtue" referred not to the disinterested service of the public good but to the courage, vitality and life giving force emanating, in the last analysis, from the creator of the universe. Milton associated virtue both with the blessings conferred on mankind by God and with the grateful recognition of life as a gift rather than as a challenge to our power to shape it to our own purposes.
I think Lasch's opposition to communitarianism and even to the concept of "community" as a useful category can only be understood as stemming from his respect for this kind of heroic ideal

>>14210819
This is why I mentioned Bookchin and Dugin.
You may not agree with their conclusions, I don't, but their analyses are top tier (Ecology Of Freedom, Fourth Political Theory, Last War Of The World Island specifically).

For a totally opposite take from Lasch that is still incredibly awesome, Roberto Unger's Religion Of The Future.

Unger's analysis of the Three Great Movements of religion is much like Dugin's analysis of Mackinder's Thalassocracy/Tellurocracy in it's ability to give a radically different and vibrant perspective.

Both books really surprised me in that.

In Bookchin's book, I found his analysis of Eliade really powerful, and his analysis of Aristotle

>>14210865
I'm gonna sleep now but I'm planning to give you a better reply tomorrow. I just googled the Roberto Unger book and he sounds fascinating.

Hope this thread lasts till then

>dissolution of the family as the primary social unit (in favor of the individual)
>loss of respect for elders as a medium of cultural inheritance
>feminism robbing all social currency from motherhood and household management
>aversion to commitment to another individual in love/marriage for fear of losing individuality
>consumerism, basing one's identity on one's relationship to brands and commodities
>disappearance of commonly accepted morality

Is the best answer to all of Lasch's grievances Islam?

>>14211125
Nah, Islam is going down as well

Thread deserves a bump.
Thank you all for introducing me to these books. The genre of 'cultural critique' didn't interest me until recently.

>>14210074
cringe and utter crap

>>14211125
There is a solution, one might say.. a final solution

>>14211792
I am but the servant of the servant

>>14211884
You're free to find another thread to be retarded in. May I suggest one of the five Buddhism/Advaita threads?

If you ever have a positive suggestion instead of a negative outburst, feel free to come back

Lasch is a tad derivative and not really an innovative writer. He did well by bringing stuff from continental Europe and packaging it to an American audience, however.

Century Of The Self should be required viewing after you've taken the Laschpill. Esp. part 3 if the cultural narcissism stuff really resonates with you.

>https://youtu.be/DnPmg0R1M04
>https://youtu.be/fEsPOt8MG7E
>https://youtu.be/ub2LB2MaGoM
>https://youtu.be/VouaAz5mQAs

>>14212007
Honestly, that should be followed by Hypernormalisation then Zizek's Pervert's Guide To Ideology (not so much Pervert's Guide To Cinema, easy to mix up)

Best set of documentaries to help digest this kind of ideological criticism

>>14209901
Narcissim is not bad.
Entitlement is bad.
What his title should be "Culture of Entitlement".
He is either jewing or dumb.

>>14212007
I like Curtis but I find he stretches credibility at times, making connections between people and events that only seem to make sense when viewed askew from the vantage point of Curtis' quite admittedly brilliant editing style. HyperNormalization was particularly bad for this as I recall.

>>14212046
50 identical selfies a day on a grown woman's social media isn't a bad thing?

>>14212059
You just didn't like it because it was redpilled on Russian Interference, that's the least interesting part of it.

>>14212007
kek my mom told me to watch this documentary
i guess if it's /lit/ approved I should follow her advice and have a topic for conversation the next time I visit

>>14212064
There's nothing wrong with that.
Have sex.

>>14212068
I didn't have a problem with that though.

>>14212076
What DID you not like then

>>14212496
I found the link between suicide bombing and Assad unconvincing and the larger linking of that to his wider argument somewhat laboured

>>14210041
He's not an anti-Marxist though. He's a Marxist.

>>14212558
I will agree that didn't need to be the first forty minutes. Film in general coulda used some snippy snippy

>>14212567
At one time, by the time he wrote Culture Of Narcissism and Minimal Self and True And Only Heaven, his whole critique is anti-marxist.

This happened a lot postwar. See Bookchin &c

>>14209901
Is The Minimal Self worth reading? Someone else on here said it's pretty mediocre and that I should skip it

>>14212567
No. Is C. Wright Mills a Marxist?

don't forget about philip rieff

>>14209923
>>14210116
Brainlet tier

>>14209943
This. That view was already old when he wrote it

>>14214060
>>14209943
Who cares? SoTS is an excruciatingly painful read, laden with clumsy aphorisms and insipid Marxist jargon. For heaven’s sake, Debord spent half of his book apologizing for Marxist political philosophy in the wake of Soviet atrocities. Lasch communicated Debord’s ideas in a way that’s more applicable and universal while shedding the fat. If I had to recommend one or the other other, Lasch would win every time hands down.

>>14214234
>SoTS is an excruciatingly painful read, laden with clumsy aphorisms and insipid Marxist jargon.
That much is true

>>14210074
No he wouldn't. Lasch is smart and provides solutions that aren't totalitarian dystopian mega-carnage, unlike Dugin who seems to salivate over the idea of global war. Dugin's a bloodthirsty moron with stupid ideas of how international politics works (see his flippant analyses of allowing China to take over south-east asia and oceania where there is already centuries-long animosity between han merchants and the locals).

>>14214234
This.

Best thing Debord wrote was Commentary on the Society of the Spectacle.

>>14214321
Fuck off, kike shill, why do you want to stop people from reading Dugin so bad?
What about Southgate? Do you hate him for no reason as well?

Heh... I’m socially conservative and economically leftist... that’s right, you have never debates anyone like me before

>>14214976
desu, most people haven’t

>>14214234
>Posts some reactionary dumbass nobody cares about out of his ass
>Anon points out that it's a watered down version of a book written a decade earlier that everyone has read
>Who cares he asks

mfw

>>14214977
It’s about to become a trend tho (see: the existence of this thread) and once it’s over it will seem as cringey as the socially liberal fiscal conservatives of yore. People here only basedface about it because it seems new and it upsets people they dislike.

>>14215090
>Lasch
>reactionary
Maybe in your perverted sense of the word but opposition to progress doesn't entail reaction. Lasch spends a good deal of time arguing that conservatives who obsess over the moral value of "tradition" obviate the responsibility of doing real historical analysis. He sees the ideology of progress and what he calls "the sociology of oblivion" (I.e burkean conservatism) as two sides of the same coin

Also this whole Debord argument is people sperging out over one passage. It's not even remotely true that any of his books are a "watered-down" version of Society of the Spectacle. Most of Lasch's work isn't reducible to awhat you find in Debord and his Marxist influences stem far more from the English new left, EP Thomson and Raymond Williams.

>>14215199
A single thread doesn't evince a trend, people have talked about Lasch here for years

>>14215264
It’s not just here it’s also people like Anna khachiyan, Justin Murphy (kind of), some ppl connected with Jacobite and more. Many leftcaths probably also qualify. You will see some versions of it in electoral politics soon. It’s a thing I have seen around for sure.

>>14215199
cringing at your damage control

>>14215254
>opposition to progress doesn't entail reaction
This is what reactionary means, I'm sorry for ending your childhood anon.

>>14215296
You know it’s true

>>14215299
akshually being opposed to progress is being conservative. Reactionaries want to go backward, which is a rather undefined and large spectrum. Back to the 1950s or back to the 1650s, both are 'reactionary'

>>14215254
Way to earnestly respond to shitposting.

>>14215299
No reaction is a kind of opposition to progress where you oppose the present to the past and decide in favour of the latter. You can still oppose progress without being reactionary if you reject the idealised image of the past, while also rejecting Whig history.

Lasch talks about this. Historical memory isn't the same as the conservative worship of custom. The latter presents the past as an organic whole which was ruptured by modernity, whereas the former understands that we inherit from the past as much in the way of conflict and disagreement as we do unity and agreement. There is no tradition but only rival and incommensurable traditions

>>14215326
Shut up zoomer faggot, you don't even know what shitposting is

So does progress actually have an end? Will there always be some issue ? Doesnt that inherently make it a slippery slope in a way?

>>14215460
This is why pragmatism is the true path, traditions survive BECAUSE THEY WORK. Progress continues only IF IT WORKS. You don't fix what isn't broken, but you still experiment to see if things can be improved.

We don't have to choose EITHER mindless ritualism OR mindless change. We can use our brains instead.

>>14215498
>traditions survive BECAUSE THEY WORK

>>14215701
Yesss, Commie, SEETHE

Richard Sennet is better. Try “The Corrosion of Character”

>Lasch was always a critic of modern liberalism and a historian of liberalism's discontents, but over time his political perspective evolved dramatically. In the 1960s, he was a neo-Marxist and acerbic critic of Cold War liberalism. During the 1970s, he supported certain aspects of cultural conservatism with a left-leaning critique of capitalism, and drew on Freud-influenced critical theory to diagnose the ongoing deterioration that he perceived in American culture and politics. His writings are sometimes denounced by feminists[7] and hailed by conservatives[8] for his apparent defense of the traditional[clarification needed] family.[citation needed]

>He eventually concluded that an often unspoken but pervasive faith in "Progress" tended to make Americans resistant to many of his arguments. In his last major works he explored this theme in depth, suggesting that Americans had much to learn from the suppressed and misunderstood populist and artisan movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Sounds based but I'm a bit on the fence. Given he was once influenced by Marx, I wonder if he actually is a "traditional leftist" or just a leftist who drops some references every now and then.

>>14216485
I also must say that him being influenced by Freud turns me off.

>>14212064
have sex

>>14215460
>So does progress actually have an end?
The very notion of linear history which you seem to take for granted is already flawed, so there's no reason to discuss whether it has an end given that the initial supposition of there being a beginning to end line(which is necessary for the notion of progress) is wrong. This notion has its roots in abrahamic thought, which states that a set of laws can bring salvation('progress'). It's ironic how /lit/ fails to see this obvious influence in many philosophers who followed, including Hegel.

>>14216534
How can anyone believe in progress when one solar flare could reset everything back to the middle ages?

>>14216501
The Wikipedia article you copy pasted said he was influenced by critical theory and that critical theory was influenced by Freud.

>>14216543
>Implying Feudalism was bad

Read Marc Bloch's Feudal Society or at least this: https://mises.org/wire/feudalism-system-private-law (I'm not suggesting ancapism, it's just a good article talking about how Hollywood ideas of Feudalism are just flat wrong and harmful

>>14216631
I'm not saying it'd be a bad thing. :3

>>14216528
Dilate

>>14216056
It's funny you mention Sennet and The Corrosion of Character. That book is next on my list.

saving a good thread

>>14215460
No. Progressives will make up new issues if they run out of things to protest

>society of the spectacle
>culture of narcissism
>true and only heaven
>adorno's culture industry chapter
What are some other books on clown world?

>>14219032
You won't like the proposed solutions, but Bookchin's Ecology Of Freedom

I can't believe American 'conservatives' are so retarded. They love the free-market and don't seem to realise it will ruin everything they hold dear.
Take the Laschpill.

>>14214783
>Fuck off, kike shill, why do you want to stop people from reading Dugin so bad?
Because he's a moron, as I indicated. Also, his followers tend to be aggressively stupid in promoting him (like yourself).

>>14219248
What's also retarded is you mentioning their 'conservatism' and not sticking to that implication. The bulk of the American right are openly not interested in conserving anything beyond the particularities of the constitution, which itself has little to do with community or specific culture.
Their overtures to Christian values are getting more hollow by the day as serious religiosity plummets everywhere, and so both pragmatic and moral conservatism are rapidly disappearing.
There couldn't be a more obvious sign that it is not a conservative wing we are dealing with when Trump got elected.

The only serious conservatism on display is growing opposition to endless mass-immigration, but most 'conservatives' are effectively in favour of it when it's legal.

>>14219032

>The Corrosion of Character
>Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism
>The Meritocracy Trap
>From Tolerance to Equality: How Elites Brought >America to Same-Sex Marriage
>The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity
>Listen Liberal

These are all very good books that are along similar lines as the books you've listed.

Watch the (((Bourgeoisie))) seethe at the fact that people are becoming Unironic Nazbols.

>n-n-no Lasch is a filthy commie >d-dont read him

>N-n-no d-dont read D-Dugin, h-he has a m-meme ideology

>Noooooooo dont read Limonov hes a fagg


(((Liberals))) are afraid.

>>14220815
Lol stop trying to sneak your Dugin garbage in.

>>14220834
>N-n-nooo D-dugin isn't a r-r-real Nazbol. p-p-please dont read him

>>14220852
Even more funny to imply that heebs don't like dugin.

>>14220864
Heebs dont like anyone who opposes Liberalism/Neoliberalism/Status Quo

Thats why they are shilling the "Intellectual dark" web so hard as celebrity "philosophers"

>>14220876
What is a heeb?

>>14221009
(((Bourgeoisie)))

>>14221016
Rich Jews aren't so bad.
It's mostly post-Christian Europeans who are driving or at least accepting the degradation of their culture and heritage it seems to me.

>>14209923
dostoievsky wrote about this 100 years eariler

>>14213314

Yes, it's not worth it in the same way The Culture of Narcissism is or The True and Only Heaven.

By far Lasch's weakest book.

>>14219032
Ellul's sociological work and McLuhan.

>>14209923
Based.

>>14219032
Simulacra and simulation

>>14210132

Carlyle’s critique of modern society is based. He predicted the atomisation of social life through individualistic unrestrained competition making friendship conditional, turning us into capitalistic potential cannibals. Another point of critique is the triumph of the liberal idol of voluntarism; nothing is determined, nothing is “for life”, as the victory of divorce, of zero-hour contracts, the idea of differentiated generations(boomer, millenial,...) attest to; in essence, the collapse of gemeinschaft and the victory of gesellschaft cf Ferdinand tonnies. the image/media replacement of reality(his scenic theory of worship, amphibious pope and the 7-foot hat eerily predict how the theatre of commercials and agressive marketing all distort reality, erecting capitalistic theatrical boasting, marketing, advertising, usurping the public sphere at the cost of the commonwealth.
His story of the amphibious pope in particular shows how the medium creates an alternate reality. And he explains how merely expanding the suffrage, how “reform” and all such political ideologies, programs,.. are mere cosmetic measures that all amount to nothing.

A good example of how gesellschaft sterilizes, depersonalises and essentially destroys the social fabric, is if you look at the evolution of the profession of lawyer in the us. Absolutely dreadful.

>>14221859
I dunno, sounds like a load of fucking commie gobbledygook to me.

>>14221875
Except commies want atomisation as well. The Corps Is Mother, The Corps Is Father.

Commies are admitted evolution of Capitalism which is really just post-Enlightenment Liberalism.

We need to go to Technofeudalism now

>>14210819
>The chapter on Carlyle, Emerson, Edwards and James in The True and Only Heaven lays out a really fascinating lineage between these thinkers, how their thought has been informed by Calvinism and puritanism, with its unique concept of heroism

You should read Schmitt’s land and sea; a world-historical meditation. It is a short and beautifully concise book, and looks at the relation between calvinism and the sea(huguenot pirates, england, netherlands,..)

There is also a very good article on academia.edu by Peter murphy, “land versus sea”. Shows how fatalistic calvinism and the wide ocean, the great unknown are connected, leading to the great dutch and english pirates, yankee merchants etc, and how this religion and way of sea-based living required a peculiar world-view and dogged heroism

>>14210819
Viewing Carlyle as a reactionary is not a caricature, he was genuinely one. He was as you say much more nuanced than the picture painted of him, but he was still a reactionary.

Also he's been seeping into popular consciousness for a while now, partly because of meme value, and partly just because he was such a phenomenal writer

>>14220815
Based. Reminder that Carlyle was Nazbol. Regimented militarized labor, strong illiberal leadership, “kith and kin” family-based social structure, no marketing and advertising, speculation, financialization, outsourcing, usury, (cf common law crime of engrossing, forestalling and regrating before free trade autism)

>>14221911
This is why Dugin's Last War Of The World Island is so good, especially wrt Mackinder

>>14209923
https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3672962
reminds me of this

>>14221935
His ideas on labor and religion are not really reactionary. Neither did he like the old “genteel” aristocracy.

>>14222055
>His ideas on labor and religion are not really reactionary.
The man wrote a defense of slavery and his idea of Christianity was 'hatred of scoundrels'

>>14222065

He did that because he thought negroes were not equal to whites. It was a racial issue for him. He was disgusting by the idea of negroes living on par with whites. If you read his “past and present” you will see how close he was to on the one hand the spenglerian idea of prussian socialism, and on the other how he favored artisanalism, guilds, the idea of a vocation. He theologizes labor, exclaiming a proto-“work shall set you free” ideology. As for the christian God, I think he considered that idea as dead. His idea of everlasting No and everlasting Yea is pretty much void of christianity. He has obvious reactionary elements in it(his admiration of guilds and monastic ora et labora way of life, romantic view of medieval age) and I would not say he wasnt one, but he cannot possibly be grouped with f.e de maistre or donoso cortes.

A good article about his labor-theology is “the re-inscription of labor in carlyle’s Past and present” by John Ulrich on jstor.

>>14221032
Soros and the jewish media are the biggest factors pushing for it, though no (democratic) government opposes them.

>>14222176
To add, his defence of slavery was also aimed at triggering the liberal-evangelicals, abolitionists and such whom he hated. Like Dickens, he also attacked their hypocrisy for campaigning on behalf of negro rebels while over 50% of working class britons died in their infancy. Pious quakers proclaiming the brotherhood of all men while sending pregnant women and 6-year olds to work in the mines for a starving wage.

Bump

>>14222247
That's why cappie and commie arguments against vassalage and serfdom are so retarded (despite being based on Hollywood nonsense) because even outright cotton picking nigger slaves in the Antebellum had orders of magnitude better living conditions than "free self-owning" mica miners in India and Madagascar for example, many of which are dependent children and literal toddlers eating a half cup of rice a day.

The ancap concept of freedom is completely insane in that in puts prime value on completely arbitrary abstractions like "self-ownership" with no regard for actual living realities of which, accounting for technological progress, were orders of magnitude better under feudalism.

Even Mises institute recognizes feudalism was more free than now

>>14222541
Forgot example:

https://mises.org/wire/feudalism-system-private-law

Does Lasch address the artistic world in his works at all?

>>14222906
Reboots of reboots of retro homages everywhere

Got your Super Mario shirt on to see the Double Feature of a Marvel Movie and a reboot of a reboot?

>>14222541
you might like the book The End of Democracy by Ralph Adams Cram, he says similar things in it

>>14209901
Hi Barrett

>>14222940
Awesome, any other recs would be greatly appreciated

>>14222940
Was able to find epub of it on archive.org, libgen and b-ok don't.
Wish I had accounts on those so I could add personal scans of rare shit

>>14223325
It's not exactly a popular book lol. Cram has a wikipedia page but it's just about his career as an architect, I dont think it even mentions his writing.

>>14210116
Post more based quotes

>>14223352
Pajeet libraries on archive are a godsend, had to go there for Arctic Home In The Vedas as well as a few other things.

>>14209901
http://esotericawakening.com/clown-world

>>14219032
>>14224499

CHRISTOPHER LASCH IS THE MAN.

incredible book. just started reading it on a flight. 100 pages went like nothing, sucked in until I realized I landed. thanks for memeing me into reading a good book for once /lit/

>>14223671
This is an excellent passage from the second chapter of Revolt of the Elites. The chapter itself is one of the best individual essays I've ever read. It's an analysis of the evolution of what opportunity meant before the Gilded Age and after. When it just meant the "ownership" of one's destiny and means no matter their economic station rather than the promise that anyone can be an elite.

I tried recommending this guy to my university's "marxist" club, they didn't seem to pay him any notice. At least I only wasted 6 hours with those pseuds

>>14224735
Yeah, I've never met a Marxist IRL who's even heard of him, and when I recommended him, the response was pretty limp.

Heres a good passage from true and only heaven's intro where he impugns leftist elites who get high off cosmopolitanism and view ordinary people as "deplorables" to quote the word that got Trump elected

>>14224735
So you spend your time on the most pseud board ever? Because they didn't like what you do? And they are the pseuds?

Something doesn't add up here.

>>14224828
Define "ordinary people". You make it rather easy for them to be "anyone who doesn't agree with my ideals." Sounds like you making excuses to promote anti-intellectualism.

>>14225271
>Define "ordinary people".
Working class and petit bourgeois. That shouldnt be too complicated.
>You make it rather easy for them to be "anyone who doesn't agree with my ideals."
Projection
>Sounds like you making excuses to promote anti-intellectualism.
Ah yes thats what we need more of, "intellectualism"

>>14225271
I find Lasch's antipathy to be directed not so much at intellectualism per say as intellectuals as a class. He writes about how intellectuals, at least in America, have come to develop their own class consciousness. When the professional-managerial class comes to define itself in opposition to the rest of the country and begins to detach itself from parochial concerns and rooted life, all while snubbing their noses at the people they've leapfrogged over, that is when you have a problem

>>14221945
but does he say anything that Schmitt hasn't already said?

All of you are going to pretend you never believed in this in less than three years.

>>14227446
why? Lasch wrote this book in 1977, and yet everything he said is still 100% relevant today. it’s fucking ridiculous. no thinker should have that prescience, no book should have that kind of staying power. Lasch really gets it

>>14212059
>I find he stretches credibility at times
Because that's what he does (although he's not necessarily incorrect because of it either). His docs are just his own world historical philosophical view condensed into easily digestible stylized episodes. Some are better than others though like I think The Century of the Self is prob his best.

>>14210115
Sounds like what is happening willy-nilly. I will check this guy out...

>>14227481
It may have been written a long time ago but its popularity right now is a fad due to people not being familiar with cultural criticism in general, so they’re easily impressed

>>14227550
It’s an articulation of ideas that are fads for other reasons, is what I mean.

>>14215460

>>14209943
>>14214234
Read McLuhan dimwits.

>>14227446
>>14227481
Nope, Lasch's ideas informed Samuel Francis who fused them into paleoconservative doctrine in the 90s. This specific interpretation found its first political expression in (as cringey as it sounds) the Trump revolution and through people like Tucker Carlson. Right-Laschianism will continue to rise because it fills the void left by the evacuation of the Left from concerns of political economy into concerns of protecting the political and cultural supremacy of the "globalist" or managerial classes centered around the American coasts

>>14227582
Exactly, it’s a fad that’s on the rise. As it becomes more popular and widespread its limitations will become clear. If it weren’t about to reach the mainstream you could all continue to post about it in peace but very soon it will be associated with some real world cringe, failures, and disappointments.

>>14227616
Well I'm glad you found something to preemptively feel smugly superior about.

>>14227640
Lol cope. Instead of getting defensive you could take this as encouragement to think through what the weak points of this ideology are and how you will meet them when they inevitably surface.

>>14225271
Nothing within the Anglo-American liberal tradition can be classified as "intellectualism".

>>14227670
Replying to myself to note that this is how Lasch arrived at his conclusions in the 70s that (to some) feel prescient today, and what anyone should do if they have a political project they are sincerely committed to.

>>14214321
>russian being a bloodthirsty moron
imagine my shock

>>14227670
~t. JIDF D&C

>>14227948
Evropean sorry

>>14227670
Care to share any criticism beyond it becoming cringe and gay when/if it gets mainstream attention? Because you sound like one of those idealogical hipsters who evaluates their belief system on how obscure it is.

>>14222176
Progressives don't even consider blacks to be people let along equals really. They view Blacks as childlike entities, advocacy on their behalf is a bizarre form of the White Man's Burden through which they admire themselves.

>>14227616
I can see your point but I think it's probably a good thing that it falls out of the hands of the extremist vanguard that holds it out of a sense of pride kinda like this guy >>14227931 is pointing at. The project of the internet right has always been to collapse the fringe into the center. Will that give us a Shapiro of "le forgotten quaint artisan white people culture"? Probably...but the objective has always been to change the minds of people who, unlike us, CAN effect change i.e. normies

>>14228065
oops, meant what this guy >>14228005 is pointing at

>>14228005
I think Lasch can be insightful but he has problems with:
1. Actually thinking through political change (eg constitutional amendment to ban divorce? Really? How?)
2. Foucault from the right wrt medicalization and “expertise.” This can and will be taken too far.
3. His ideas about dependence on the state lead you right back to austerity, which has already been done and was a failure.

>>14228023
>They view Blacks as childlike entities, advocacy on their behalf is a bizarre form of the White Man's Burden through which they admire themselves.

>>14228122
The only real issue is the third one, and that stems from a misunderstanding of the populist project. To defend small proprietors (the essence of populism) the agrarian radicals of the 1890s were prepared to use the power of the state to restructure the corporate economy (nationalization, protectionism, trust-busting, etc.). Lasch is criticizing a very specific function of the modern welfare-state, namely the therapeutic mindset that leads it to offer palliative policies (redistribution schemes) without even touching the structural issues that gave rise to the problems it attempts to ameliorate.

>>14228122
>>14228338
I agree that a constitutional amendment to ban divorce is silly and unworkable. Issues like divorce are cultural more than legal and so the solution has to also be cultural. If you ban divorce that does not fix the issue of why people are getting divorced in the first place, and would probably result in less people getting married to avoid the hassle.

>>14228297
What did you mean by this.

>>14228609
its both funny and TRUE what anon said about the master-slave relationship between liberals and black people

>>14228659
Oh, I thought you might have been disagreeing with me.

>>14228562
What about getting rid of no-fault divorce?

New York State didn’t have it till 2010.

>>14227582
Has Tucker Carlson talked about Lasch?

The American Conservative (Which Carlson has wrote in before) has a lot of articles about Lasch.

I feel as if Carlson mentions him he’ll become more mainstream in American conservatism. Hell, imagine if Senator Josh Hawley mentions Lasch...

>>14228790
Carlson hasn't mentioned Lasch explicitly from what I know (though I can't say I'm a frequent news watcher so he might have at some point) but his critique of the emancipatory/nation-wrecking side of capitalism feels like it was ripped out of the Lasch-Francis school

>>14228750
It's the same, sure no-fault divorce makes divorce easier but it's still divorce. Divorce is a massive and stressful disruption of your life. It's ironic that many on the internet right spend so much time complaining about the dissolution of community and family. The increase in unhappiness among women and men. The skyrocketing rates of suicide and addiction. Yet they can't come up with an explanation for why so many are getting divorced that goes beyond saying all women are vapid whores. They also absolutely refuse to consider that some men really are losers, drunks etc and that that might have any part to play. People need strong communities, familys, dare I say churches, to discourage divorce when there is a chance for reconciliation, not a change in a law.

>>14229003
>Yet they can't come up with an explanation for why so many are getting divorced that goes beyond saying all women are vapid whores.
Uh yes they can, you just blow in from reddit? People regularly cite loss of religioisity compounded with anomie from multiculturalism. Arguably these are bigger reasons than the one you outlined

>>14229038
The loss of religiosity is an effect, not a cause of the diseased culture and multiculturalism is just one factor of many that are contributing to the issue.

>>14229003
Most divorces are initiated by women. They initiate the divorce because they can, as they're looking for a better partner. It's a side effect of a culture that glorifies autonomy and personal "fulfillment".

>>14229393
>They also absolutely refuse to consider that some men really are losers, drunks etc and that that might have any part to play.
And really most of the people who advocate the viewpoint that you do are either single or are said losers, drunks etc.

>>14228562
And this is the reason we need the libertarian Feudal system.
Heroin to guns to broken homes, we can't legislate culture, we have to change culture for itself.

>>14229488
Did the percent of losers go up that much? Many of those women aren't really prizes, either.

>>14229550
Probably, technology defintely isnt helping.

>>14229611
Many of those women are literally drunks as well desu, their wine consumption rates are rather high.

>>14229511
>we can't legislate culture, we have to change culture for itself.
Yes
>And this is the reason we need the libertarian Feudal system
No
Libertarian beliefs are completely antithetical to fixing culture. I can't think of anything more alienating than people abandoning their families and communities to move the whichever fiefdom has the particular flavor of Pinochetian minarchism or Hoppian ancapism or whatever that they find most appealing.

>>14229665
Yes everybody is fucked up. But the fact that women initiate most divorces probably has do do more with some biological difference in dealing with conflict that some pua manosphere babble about optimizing the efficiency of their outcomes.

>>14222935
Why so? Doesn't 'selling' nostalgia actually mean that we value the past more? (even if it's only products that we miss)

>>14229672
You misunderstood what I meant by libertarian. I mean in the sense of public power in private hands.

I think I posted a Mises institute article on what I'm talking about earlier in thread.

Not Murray Rothbard libertarian.

>>14229689
Bullshit, it's truly Individualism Overdrive that makes them do it. I've seen it too many times.
They literally are culturally trained to put their own desires (not needs) above any other concern. They are constantly trying to trade up.

>>14229693
If the past were so great, we would be busy creating new moments of our own to enjoy instead of buying worn-out, mass-produced experiences from the culture industry.

>>14229736
You should probably be more concerned with getting a wife than predicting why the bitch is going to leave you. Thinking about the world through that lens in unhealthy and contributes to social alienation.

>>14229003
>>14229393
>>14229689


When comes to the divorce trend, and even the so called “Sex Recession,” I really think the biggest factor is the rates of college for men and women.


I forgot the name of it, but a book came out recently (along with articles on the same topic) saying that basically, the reason men and women are having less relationships is cause of economics based off of college degrees.

Basically, there are less “economically-desirable” men for women. This is cause there now more women in college and graduating college. This has been a trend for a decade or more, with men going to college steadily declining. This includes grad degrees

This creates a hierarchy, because women are told they should marry up. And we all know just having degree doesn’t make it so your wealthy (Although your more likely to be).

Women with Bachelor’s and no debt will probably marry a guy in the same boat or with a grad degree.

Women with a grad degree with marry a guy with a grad degree.

Hell, a woman who’s isn’t college educated will probably want to marry a guy with at least a Bachelor’s (even if he’s indebt).

I’ve also seen a statistic showing how much men with Bachelor’s are more likely to marry against men without one.

And then once you realize /r9k/ is full of people who are college dropouts or never went to, it begins to make sense.

>>14229796
Now this begs the question of why men aren’t going to college.

Is it affirmative action?

I don’t think so, Christina Hoff Sommers has a book, The War Against Boys, showing that our current education system is just not helping boys, even at an elementary level. And it just gets worse as college goes on.

Before men could make a good living without a degree, like a trade, but jobs like that are disappearing, so now we have a huge rate of male suicide that we have never seen before.

>>14229820
White women are the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action according to the PoC activists.

>>14229820
Yes, the changes in educational attainment, income etc in the face of traditional expectations of marriage for women is certainly contributing to the decrease in marriage rates. There are many other factors like increasing social alienation, the loss of organic communities providing opportunities to meet people with shared backgrounds. The loss of blue collar jobs. Lots of problems. College as it exists today needs to be destroyed, and the school system in general is diseased and dysfunctional.

>>14229820
As a millennial I can tell you that all my friends got out of college expecting good jobs but that was 2008 and 09 and they all ended up in fast food and such like me (I had to stay out to help out my disabled mom when my dad died) so I was in the exact same position as them, minus tens of thousands of debt.

Everyone's little brothers were watching this go down.

The other side of the coin is a lot of people either staying in college or going back to college to avoid failing in the workforce, I know liberals that have been getting school loans for the last decade because they couldn't make it in real jobs (and also just don't want to be adults).

I'm happy I went and learned nursing, factory and kitchen work out in the real world and got paid to do it.

Most of college is just reading books. I can do that myself for free

>>14229903
They aren't wrong. At this point there are a huge amount of white collar jobs that are just make work corporate welfare for women and minorities.

>>14229908
The school system needs to be replaced by a Guild System again. Employers should train employees to do what they need them to do. The idea that everything should be isolated in separate industries (an excuse to avoid responsibility and liability, and to offload costs on the state) is fucked, and it's broken because it's inorganic and atomized.

It's yet another part of the hyperindividualistic paradigm.

>>14229915
At least part of the reason you need a degree today for any white collar work involves the prohibition of employers giving IQ tests.

>>14229954
This also ignores that a great many people aren't designed for white collar work. I had a few office jobs, I prefer manual labor, frees my mind for contenplation, exercises my body, and I'm not doing totally abstract things while politicking nonstop to keep from being fucked by rivals and metoo settlement chasers that are looking for ways to set you up

>>14229949
Employers used to use tests to find suitable employees and presumably train them on the job to some degree. Then that got branded as racist and it was understood that only college would count as an acceptable signal of moderate competence.

>>14229972
I actually got the last of the OJT work world.
I was trained to be an ICF-MR and a CNA-MedAide by my employers, not even counting all the shit like powdercoat painting and forklift driving and stuff elsewhere.

Now you have to pay $300 to get a CNA before you get the job. Now they are always crying they are understaffed.

Weird

>>14229949
>>14229949

This t b h. Until late 19th century us potential lawyers were apprenticed, “reading law” instead of spending 200k on for-profit law schools. Top lawyers like John Adams never dropped a fortune for listning to some jew talking about how to best scam clients.

>>14227674
Sure, bud.

>>14230027

I was told law degrees were worthless cause baby boomer lawyers never retire and the demand for new lawyers is super low, so no new positions.

>>14229949
>>14229908

Is is possible that there just too many colleges? What would happen is a bunch were to close?

>>14209901
Bump

>>14230491
It is the case that there are too many colleges. If they closed, lots of small towns would have a bad go of it economically. Somehow it would also be racist.

bretty good thread, don't stop

bump

>>14211916
>Trying "final solutions" twice

You fucks are as dumb or dumber than sophomores turning in papers titled
>term_paper_final_v3.docx

I'm a huge Christopher Lasch fan, I've read (almost) everything he wrote, and lots of people he recommended (like Norman O. Brown), except for his writing guide "Plain Style: A Guide to Written English." Does anyone have a PDF? I can't find it anywhere.

>>14231806
You can borrow it from Archive.org but there's a waiting list. Is it an expensive buy used?

>>14231876
I think its fairly inexpensive but I'd prefer that PDF. I might borrow it from archive.org and disseminate it online myself. I have a feeling that's what he would've wanted.

>>14231806
Great meeting another Lasch fan! I've read his Big 3 books (TaOH, RoTE, and CoN). Outside of those three, what would you recommend reading next from him?

>>14231943
Likewise! Whilst there are tons of miscellaneous articles from him - google 'Lasch Bibliography' to find a list - its even more interesting to read the people he recommends or dislikes. He really is one of the few titans of North American thought, do you know any similar figures? His collection "Women and the Common Life" would be what I'd recommend next! Also, if you haven't read Freud yet you really should. He is, more than anyone else, the central figure within Lasch's work.

My favorite thing about Lasch is that he forces you to be more discerning: you need to read more carefully, more broadly, and more intensely to fully appreciate the subtle qualities of his arguments. I always find that after I read one of his books I'm looking up syllabi or whatever to broaden my perspective.

Theodore Veblen and Kenneth Galbraith are also worth a read.

>>14230491
>Is is possible that there just too many colleges?
Not really
>What would happen is a bunch were to close?
Small towns that depend on those would get fucked, and so would anyone that would join the workforce after said closure, since those sods would have to be degreeless in a market with a large diplom glut.
Overall, the big issue isn't many universities per, but rather highly questionable courses that exist just to make money to the institution, such as liberal arts and english, albeit I doubt that /lit/ will really take what I am saying seriously since half of it seems to think that modern culture is dominated by a technocratic cabal fo STEMfags rather than journalist, sociologists and lawyers.

>>14233840
The problem is not all the *studies and communications degrees. The problem is that you need one to get a 40k a year open office hell job that mostly involves writing and replying to emails. Fuck college, fuck the parasitic bureaucracy of college administration.

>>14213314
>>14221082
Minimal Self is worth reading. You see Lasch engage critically with a lot of his contemporaries (whole earth types, Marcuse, Rieff, fiction) for taking part in a culture of threat that encourages narcissism. Its great. If you're interested in psychoanalysis the Bibliographic essay at the end on Lasch's use of his sources is essential.

>>14211947
This is both lazy and inaccurate. How do you account for his deep and lasting interest in America's native intellectual tradition?

>>14213994
I endorse this and suggest people start with Rieff's "charisma" over the better known triumph of the therapeutic or Freud:Mind of the moralist.

>>14222906
In various works. Minimal Self does at several points.

>>14228122
>>14228338
I would add that Lasch articulates more specific political goals in public events (old Telos conferences he took part in) when arguing with guys like claes ryn, and in various book reviews.

Lasch's daughter (Elizabeth Lasch-Quinn) and his students are all worth looking at. Russell Jacoby, Rochelle Gurstein, David F. Noble, William Leach, Kevin Mattson (kinda).

>>14233840
journalists, sociologists and lawyers are essentially STEMfags in their hearts, even if they don't know what a wave function is.

>>14234034
This my issue with it, I have one of these jobs and defintely didnt need college to do this shit.

>>14210116
You see this in Vancouver, Canada.
TONS and TONS of money Canadian and international, average detached house is ~$2million USD, more Lamborghinis, Mercedes (there are 4 Mercedes dealerships in this very small city), McLarens, Range Rovers, Volvos, Audis, BMW's, Maseratis, Ferraris per capita than anywhere on the planet - there's even a Pagani store (those cars cost $1.5 million USD)...

...and yet, there's very, very little in terms of civic patronage.
You'd expect to see concert halls and art and history museums and public sculpture and various civic masterpieces and charities throughout the city, supported by the wealthy citizens, but there is next to nothing.
It's all self-concerned money with no sense of civic responsibility.

>>14209923
this is fedora tier, i don't get it. i really, really don't act like i'm on camera 24/7, quite the opposite.

>>14234597
It might be because you have learning difficulties

>>14234603
no i understand the abstraction, i just don't think it applies to modern society. as long as there are no physical cameras around, you don't subconsciously start behaving like you're being watched. I mean, of course I act differently when I'm out in public, but that's because I AM being watched, I can see the people around me, and I adjust my behaviour in a way that seems socially appropriate in the moment. When I'm not among people there isn't a single part of my mind that's (sub)consciously changing my behaviour because of some invisible all-seeing eye.

>>14234633
>as long as there are no physical cameras around
Not the poster you were replying too but I wanted to jump in. You've got to remember too that in contemporary society virtually everyone has a camera - a phone with internet access. Also Lasch is getting at a little more when he uses the word public, which includes discourse networks both from his time and ours (Print cultures, Twitter, Reddit).

Think about how people act on Twitter - especially the journalist types - who self-censor everything they say, promote an atmosphere of positivity, yet act like bloodhounds to find instances of people making mistakes to gain social capital. Although this example is more obvious than what Lasch had in mind its still the same environment.

>>14234547
>vancouver
yeah, those are all chinese tycoons and their children. like they give a flying fuck about museums and shit. all they need is boba tea and a lambo.

>>14234668
online culture is different. but again, you're aware everyone can see what you post on there because they actually can. it's not some invisible big brother you're not aware of

>>14234693
do you have autism? how do you miss the point so hard that you inadvertently spell out the case while refusing to acknowledge the connection?

>>14220815
strasserist gang

>>14234897
fuck off

bump