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.
This is part of what a family is about, not just love. It's knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work.
A house is built of logs and stone, of tiles and posts and piers; a home is built of loving deeds that stand a thousand years.
You have to really respect what your kids are doing with their kids and how they're raising them. You can't push your way into areas where you shouldn't be saying anything. You have to always remember they're not your own kids. Play with them, love them, spoil them to death - then hand them back.
I love conversations with kids in the meet and greet lines β little people with little voices! I love babies. Someday I would love to be a parent, but I want that time to come when Iβve experienced so much of the world. My life will be devoted to making that childβs life as wonderful, beautiful, magical and perfect as it can possibly be. I want to wait until there is no ounce of me left that has anything self-centered to experience.
I'm just lucky because my kids are grown-up - I love them, very proud of them, and we are in close contact as big-time friends, but they don't need me that much now and I can actually enjoy this wonderful world of music.
Our dad hugged us and kissed us so much that some friends and relatives complained that he was going to turn us into sissies or homosexuals. But my dad didn't care. Let them raise their kids in a reserved and reticent way. He grew up in Israel, and his boys were going to be hugged and kissed by their father and know they were loved.
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