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Therefore, generations as well fail to properly interact which, in turn,
deprives the young of a "natural" sort of guidance, and sociability has to
"retreat" into private domains.
Whereas in his first book,
The New Radicalism in America (1963),
Lasch showed how and why it was so difficult in our century to be both
a radical and a liberal intellectual at the same time, and his best-selling
book,
The Culture of Narcissism
(1978) , demonstrated that Americans had
become narcissistic and were overly oriented towards therapies and satis–
factions of the self, the current volume elaborates on these themes but
focuses on the dilemmas and double-binds we as a society must come to
terms with. But this will not be possible, Lasch keeps implying, as long as
we think we may succeed to build personal self-esteem without personal
competence, move into technological jobs without having the requisite
skills, or raise the level of public intelligence without knowledge of the
powers and limits of Congress, the Constitution, or the Presidency.
In essay after essay, Lasch emphasizes the need for higher levels of ed–
ucation, of morals and civic values. Thus it appears not to be accidental
that the last chapter addresses "The Soul of Man under Secularism" - the
title, he informs us, is a play on Oscar Wilde's title,
The Soul of Man un–
der Socialism
(1891). Socialism had been Lasch's inspiration for most of
his life. "In the heyday of the socialist movement its attraction for intel-
. lectuals cannot be adequately explained without considering the way it
overlapped with the bohemian critique of the bourgeoisie ... [and] the
unremitting onslaught against bourgeois culture was far more lasting in
its effect ... than the attacks on capitalism." Lasch asserts that the solu–
tion of the "modern spiritual problem" is not in a return to obsolete
forms of religion any more than in a secular world view, but only in
living with our own proper lives as truly as did Christ in all its implica–
tions. In sum, Lasch finds that disillusionment is the characteristic form of
modern pride, that nostalgia does not offer a way out, and that religion
never provided unambiguous answers to ethical questions. Nor was it
resistant to skepticism or forestalled speculation about the meaning of
life. Ultimately, Lasch's bleak picture is not hopeless, if only because his
description of doom and gloom, in its very sharp depictions, though not
pointing to solutions, shows that the search for truth, along with a his–
torical perspective, may well be the means for American society to save
itself
Still, Lasch's book, as a whole, is a searing indictment of American
society and presents a sad outlook for American democracy. But it has a
familiar ring, and it may be painting too dark a picture. For along with
the inanities of our culture, ordinary people have a basic common sense
