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.
A society that places a low value on its mothers and the process of birth will suffer an array of negative repercussions for doing so. Good beginnings make a positive difference in the world, so it is worth our while to provide the best possible care for mothers and babies throughout this extraordinarily influential part of life.
I know my father and my mother, but beyond that I cannot go. My ancestry is blurred.
I now see that is a woman's God-given role to tend to the home and take care of the children: it's just that the entire planet is our home, and every child on it is one of our children.
Mom sobbed something into Dad's chest that I wish I hadn't heard, and that I hope she never finds out that I did hear. She said, "I won't be a mom anymore." It gutted me pretty badly.
I don't want my kids to grow up with no father like I did. I came to the conclusion a while ago that you can work until midnight and not be finished or you can work until 6 or 7 and not be finished. I decided I'd rather work until 6 or 7.
I'm a 21st-century kid trapped in a 19th-century family.
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