Today Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility but by the banality of the social order they have erected against it.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that people feel constrained by societal norms rather than inspired by the potential for freedom and opportunity.
Christopher Lasch highlights a paradox in American society where, instead of being motivated by endless possibilities, individuals are stifled by the mundane and repetitive structures of social order they have created. This commentary implies that societal conventions may limit true personal growth and exploration, leading to a collective sense of dissatisfaction or disillusionment.
In practice
In a discussion about modern society, one might cite this quote to illustrate how routine can dampen ambition.
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.
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.
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.
Are you never afraid of God's judgement in denying him? Most certainly not. I also deny Zeus and Jupiter and Odin and Brahma, but this causes me no qualms. I observe that a very large portion of the human race does not believe in God and suffers no visible punishment in consequence. And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.
You cannot reshape human nature without mutilating human beings.
The stars are like letters that inscribe themselves at every moment in the sky. Everything in the world is full of signs. All events are coordinated. All things depend on each other. Everything breathes together.
Natural death is independent of all reason and is really an irrational death, in which the pitiable substance of the shell determines how long the kernel is to exist or not; in which, accordingly, the stunted, diseased and dull witted jailer is lord, and indicates the moment at which his distinguished prisoner shall die.
...it's my hypothesis that the individual is not a pre-given entity which is seized on by the exercise of power. The individual, with his identity and characteristics, is the product of a relation of power exercised over bodies, multiplicities, movements, desires, forces.
'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
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