It is the logic of consumerism that undermines the values of loyalty and permanence and promotes a different set of values that is destructive of family life.
Interpretation
Consumerism can weaken familial bonds by prioritizing materialism over loyalty and stability.
In this quote, Christopher Lasch critiques consumerism, suggesting that the relentless pursuit of material goods erodes traditional values like loyalty and permanence, ultimately harming family life. By emphasizing transient pleasures and possessions over enduring relationships, consumer culture fosters an environment that detracts from the foundational aspects of family and community, leading to instability in these essential social units.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of family values over material possessions.
Much of what is euphemistically known as the middle class, merely because it dresses up to go to work, is now reduced to proletarian conditions of existence. Many white-collar jobs require no more skill and pay even less than blue-collar jobs, conferring little status or security.
The reporting of news has to be understood as propaganda for commodities, and events by images.
It is advertising and the logic of consumerism that governs the depiction of reality in the mass media.
Even the reporting of news has to be understood not as propaganda for any particular ideology, liberal or conservative, but as propaganda for commodities β for the replacement of things by commodities, use values by exchange values, and events by images.
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.
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.
One of the greatest blessings we can offer to the world is the power of a Christ-centered home where the gospel is taught, covenants are kept, and love abounds.
There must always be a struggle between a father and son, while one aims at power and the other at independence.
I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself.
All too often a familyβs spending is governed more by their yearning than by their earning. They somehow believe that their life will be better if they surround themselves with an abundance of things. All too often all they are left with is avoidable anxiety and distress
A mother's body remembers her babies-the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has it's own entreaties to body and soul.
If you've never been hated by your child, you've never been a parent.
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