I have reached the end of Narcissism and am about to begin its sequel, The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times, but before I do, I want to quote from the "Afterword", Lasch's reflection on the continued relevance of his work, written in 1990. It concerns the on-going phenomenon of the odd juxtaposition of fundamentalist religion, in a variety of forms, coexisting with an almost religious zeal for technological and scientific rescue from our current social and political troubles. From page 248:
More than anything else, it is this coexistence of hyper-rationality and a widespread revolt against rationality that justifies the characterization of our twentieth-century way of life as a culture of narcissism. These contradictory sensibilities have a common source. Both take root in the feelings of homelessness and displacement that afflict so many men and women today, in their heightened vulnerability to pain and deprivation, and in the contradiction between the promise that they can "have it all" and the reality of their limitations.
One of the more annoying features of right-wing critics of left-wing politics and policy preferences is this idea that by introducing an acceptance and understanding of limits on human action, we are somehow being unpatriotic, as if recognizing that we human beings are not masters of the universe is unAmerican. Whether it's limitations placed on economic growth out of a deference for saving our world environment, or limitations placed on our sovereignty in order to ensure a more stable and just world, it seems to me these are small prices to pay so that my children and grandchildren can live in a world that is at least as good as ours. Recognizing the reality that ours is a world power in decline, and the need to decline with grace rather than dragging the whole thing down around us - like Sampson in the Philistine temple - is a far more socially and politically mature reaction than insisting that, at all costs, our status as a great power must be maintained at all costs.
I do not fear my own death; I do fear the murder, however, not of myself or a family member, but my country and my planet by those who are so frightened and enraged by the thought of their own existential annihilation that they would rather tear it all down (since, of course, the universe will wink out at the moment of their death), of all that centuries and generations have built. We must not succumb to fear and rage. My hope is we will not, but we should all work together to make sure it doesn't happen.
