Christopher Lasch

Propaganda in the ordinary sense of the term plays a less important part in a consumer society, where people greet all official pronouncements with suspicion.

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.

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.

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

The model of ownership, in a society organized round mass consumption, is addiction.

The question of the family now divides our society so deeply that the opposing sides cannot even agree on a definition of the institution they are arguing about.

Drugs are merely the most obvious form of addiction in our society. Drug addiction is one of the things that undermines traditional values.