The Culture of Narcissism
by Christopher Lasch, Michel L. Landa, Barry Press · first published 1978
38% recommend62% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Analyzes how material abundance and modern culture shaped narcissistic tendencies in American life, with predictions many find strikingly accurate. Suits readers of social criticism and the history of ideas.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Here is a penetrating view of the narcissistic personality of our time. Liberated from the superstitions of the past, it embraces new cults, only to discover that emancipation from ancient taboos brings neither sexual nor spiritual peace. Emotionally shallow, fearful of intimacy, hypochondriacal, primed with pseudo-self-insight, indulging in sexual promiscuity, dreading old age and death, the new narcissist has lost interest in the future. The happy hooker has replaced Horatio Alger as a symbol of success. Reformers with the best of intentions condemn the lower class to a second-rate educat
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Well, for something US-made and more appealing to the less-continental reading tastes, Christopher Lasch is perhaps mandatory on this subject: The Culture of Narcissism The Revolt of the Elites Haven in a Heartless World The Minimal Self and so on.
on “What the Hell Is Going On? Effects of Information Abundance” ↗…display bad character, and it will get you moving around and make you humble. If you enjoy history and literature, maybe Plutarch's parallel lives of Alcibiades and Coriolanus; or Christopher Lasch's "Culture of Narcissism" could provide some perspective. And as someone said below, Dale Carnegie's book on winning friends and influencing people, 100 years later, is a really useful, life changing book.
on “Ask HN: How did you fix your narcissism?” ↗The Culture of Narcissism by Lasch or Democracy in America by de Tocqueville might be of interest to you.
on “Eric Schmidt is working to launch a university” ↗You'd probably enjoy reading Christopher Lasch's "The Culture of Narcissism". It makes all sort of great points about yesterday's hippies' and pop culture personalities' ability to recycle their (frankly) egomaniacal tendencies, and analyzes what gave rise to those in the first…
on “Emerging evidence that mindfulness can sometimes increase selfish tendencies” ↗Indeed, Lasch was a prescient thinker and reading through Culture of Narcissism I am impressed at how accurate his predictions were. Chapter 3 in particular is almost painful to read.
on “Christopher Lasch - The Culture of Narcissism” ↗…https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_generation The baby boomers ... were dubbed the "Me" generation by writer Tom Wolfe during the 1970s; Christopher Lasch was another writer who commented on the rise of a culture of narcissism among the younger generation.
on “Narcissistic Students Get Better Grades from Narcissistic Professors” ↗…Kingdoms. That is, the liberal arts are more imperialistic, racist, whatever than the "western" culture that they teach from. Ever since I realized that Japanese cultural critics think that Lasch's "Culture of Narcissism" applies to the Tokugawa period I try to delete "western" from "civilization" and "culture" as much as I can. (They also manage the weird trick of making recent French philosophy more clear to the English…
on “Saving the Liberal Arts” ↗> Theory Z: The prime motivation for every single employee in every single organization is improving their own local working and living conditions. That's the thesis of Culture of Narcissism (1979) by Christoper Lasch.
on “Theory X and Theory Y management” ↗…grandparents came to the U.S. as refugees from war-torn Europe and economic collapse in Darkest Canada and it is not all that different than Syrians, Somalis and so many others migrating today. See also the "Culture of Narcissism" by Lasch which applies to not just the 1970s but also the 1870s and is believed by many Japanese to explain the moral decay of the isolationist Tokugawa empire.
on “The Mental Disease of Late-Stage Capitalism” ↗I find myself deleting "western" from "western civilization" a lot lately. Chris Lasch's "Culture of Narcissism" applies to the 1970+ US, Ancient Rome, Heian and Tokugawa periods in Japan. The CCP would like to think it has the cure but I am certain China has the disease too.
on “Dominance of Western culture is robbing us of solutions from other cultures” ↗…who you would marry or what kind of work you would do or how you fit in with other people, it was all decided for you. Chris Lasch, on the other hand in the book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture_of_Narcissism saw the culture in the US being corrupted by narcissism in the later half of the 19th century to today. Japanese people think that analysis applies to Japanese people in the Tokugawa period and if you…
on “Narcissistic Collapse” ↗…dissent. I would tend to dismiss “alternative lifestyles”, “protest movements” and such insofar as these are an extension of individualism which is the dominant ideology of the U.S. (Lasch said that his “Culture of Narcissism” wasn’t really about the 1970s but rather the period 1870- in the US and is widely thought in Japan to describe the Tokugawa period)
on “Future shock: A big book that was wrong” ↗‘Capitalism’ is a term that was coined by its enemies, if it had its own way it would have no name but be the thing that “there is no alternative” to. Christopher Lasch’s Culture of Narcissism is about the 1970s (early middle Technetronic?) but also about the late 19th and the old pagan empires such as Rome and is popular in Japan as a critique of the Tokugawa era culture. I imagine urban…
on “D&D is Anti-Medieval” ↗Post-modernity caused a fracture of identity into ever smaller fragments and communities. (Century of the Self, even though that was about the previous century) EDIT: The Culture of Narcissism is also relevant. Although I still don’t understand what narcissism is. And don’t read it if you are running a presidential campaign.
on “The Atlantic Did Me Dirty” ↗On the other hand, music is demonstrably becoming more self-centred and narcissistic: https://brainfodder.org/song-lyrics-simpler-repetitive/ Christopher Lasch talks about this in The Culture of Narcissism, but essentially it's a response to greater levels of emotional insecurity due to atomisation and social disconnection.
on “The cultural decline of literary fiction” ↗