/lit/ - Literature

>National Bestseller
>quote from New York Times Book Review
>implying democracy is a good thing
Hard pass.

>>20320548
Not only that, but derives its title from a far better book.

>>20320602
WHATS THE BOOK, ANON?

>>20320530
>Shopping malls are ... BAD!
well yeah, not that it matters anymore.

>>20320606

Revolt of the Masses? Www, Lasch doesn't believe in populism does he? That's poopy

>>20320606
...of the Masses

>>20320548
>MALLS ARE GOOD!
>THINK OF THE MERCHANTS!

>>20320613
Capitalism is what’s wrong

>>20320606
Revolt of the Mass by Jose Ortega y Gasset

>>20320548
>>20320602
>democracy is LE BAD i am LE ARISTOCRAT who hates LE GLOBOHOMO even though globoniggers are the most fundamentally anti-democratic satanist niggers on earth today

>>20320530
They are. And Lasch would be even more horrified to see what's replaced them (Amazon and online shopping).

If I recall correctly, Lasch's argument was that the shopping mall replaced the town/neighborhood center as the primary place for local commerce, especially in the suburbs. The issue with this is that the town or neighborhood center serves other important functions for a community beyond mere material exchange. Bars and coffee shops act as "third places," wherein individuals by virtue of mere proximity level class distinction and foster community solidarity, relationship building, and idea exchange (think Mill's On Liberty). Parks, libraries, and other public buildings, and the nearness to residential areas, fosters widespread commingling of the same sort, including the interaction of children with adults of the community who serve as important agents of socialization and education for the youth ("Don't walk in the street" / "Don't talk like that" / "Don't steal" / "Sweep and I'll give you a dollar" / etc). In short, the town center cultivates community solidarity and civic virtue.

The shopping mall is at best able to serve these functions poorly, and mostly doesn't at all.

>>20320548
You should give him a try. He'll surprise you.
>>20320602
Very arguable. The Revolt of the Elites is a masterpiece of social criticism and maps onto reality much more readily that Ortega y Gasset's, especially today.
>>20320634
He does, and his entire career is full of compelling arguments for it.

>>20321251
Ortega y Gasset's book is fantastic, it's just not terrifically translated from the Spanish.

>As today his surroundings do not so force him, the eternal mass-man, true to his character, ceases to appeal to any authority other than himself, and feels himself lord of his own existence. Conversely the select man, the excellent man is urged by interior necessity to appeal to some standard beyond himself, superior to himself, into whose service he freely enters. ... Contrary to what is usually thought, it is the man of excellence, not the common man who lives in essential servitude. Life has no savour for him unless he makes it consist in service to something transcendent. Hence he does not look upon the necessity of serving as an oppression. When, by chance, such necessity is lacking, he grows restless and invents some new standard, more difficult, more exigent, with which to coerce himself. This is life lived as a discipline — the noble life.

>Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us — by obligations, not by rights. Noblesse oblige. "To live as one likes is plebeian; the noble man aspires to order and law" (Goethe). The privileges of nobility are not in their origin concessions or favours; on the contrary, they are conquests. And their maintenance supposes, in principle, that the privileged individual is capable of reconquering them, at any moment, if it were necessary, and if anyone were to dispute them. ... It is annoying to see the degeneration suffered in today's speech by a word so inspiring as "nobility." For, by coming to mean for many people hereditary "noble blood," it is changed into something similar to common rights, into a static, passive quality which is received and transmitted, something inert. But the strict sense, the etymon of the word nobility, is essentially dynamic. Noble means the "well known," that is, known by everyone, famous, he who has made himself known by excelling the anonymous mass.

>As one advances in life, one realises more and more that the majority of men — and of women — are incapable of any other effort than that strictly imposed on them as a reaction to external compulsion. And for that reason, those few individuals we come across who are capable of spontaneous and joyous effort stand out isolated, monumentalised, so to speak, in our experience. These are the select men, the nobles, the only ones who are active and not merely reactive, for whom life is a perpetual striving, an incessant course of training. Training = askesis. These are the ascetics.

>>20321278
It's Lasch's contention that much of what you wrote applies much more realistically to the working class than it does to the upper class.

>As today his surroundings do not so force him, the eternal mass-man, true to his character, ceases to appeal to any authority other than himself, and feels himself lord of his own existence.
It is the working class man that holds onto religion and traditional values, authorities greater than himself, and the elite that feel themselves lords of their own existence, or perhaps more generally feel that mankind is the lord of its own existence.

>Conversely the select man, the excellent man is urged by interior necessity to appeal to some standard beyond himself, superior to himself, into whose service he freely enters
It is the select, "excellent" man who finds himself unable to live beyond himself, hence their mass acquisition of wealth without any reciprocity towards those that made him so wealthy. Elon Musk as an example is one of the most reciprocal, and even his reciprocity is ambiguous at best.

>Contrary to what is usually thought, it is the man of excellence, not the common man who lives in essential servitude. Life has no savour for him unless he makes it consist in service to something transcendent. Hence he does not look upon the necessity of serving as an oppression. When, by chance, such necessity is lacking, he grows restless and invents some new standard, more difficult, more exigent, with which to coerce himself. This is life lived as a discipline — the noble life.
Forgetting the much more obvious and plain (material) way in which the common man lives in essential servitude, I do not see the elite of today acting in service towards anything transcendent. Their milquetoast humanitarianism is watery and thin at best, and nonexistent more commonly. He does not "serve" anybody, especially not the commoners or his community, in any tangible way. Again, Elon Musk is perhaps the best counterexample I can think of, and even his humanitarianism is, well, watery.

>Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us — by obligations, not by rights. Noblesse oblige. "To live as one likes is plebeian; the noble man aspires to order and law" (Goethe).
In what sense do the "nobles" today have a sense of obligation, and to what extent do they carry it out? They seem to be the ones living as they like, and "law and order" was Trump's soundbite, not the elite's.

That whole thing is sort of what Lasch is getting at, at least to the extent that he discusses Ortega y Gasset's work.

>>20321092
10/10 on ideology
Though she’d never say the N word

Bump for lasch

>>20321670
I’ve seen her (the real butterfly) say glownigger before in a thread about Carl Schmitt

>>20321378
>thinks this is profound
>posting whole ass walls of text
Embarrassing