Funny how national events –
or events that capture the national attention – stir one’s memory. To this writer, the attack on the national
Capitol last January 6th was such an event. He recalled something he read some years
ago. That being the late Christopher
Lasch’s book, The Culture of Narcissism.[1] When Lasch wrote that book, he seemed to be
motivated in part to explain the prevalence of leftist, anti-war demonstrators
and of the then popular cultist movements.
It seems that what he had to say then, in the late seventies, has
relevance today.
His basic area of concern is how bourgeois society has lost
its ability to meet challenges. Not only
was the Western world unable to think of big solutions, but there also seems to
be a lack of willingness to even try.
And that state is not a reaction to a lack of such challenges; they are
out there and threaten to overwhelm those societies, including the US. One can say that even though Lasch wrote this
work some thirty years ago, his concerns are still affecting those nations
today.
It is as if classical liberalism,[2] a
central strain of belief in the West, has lost its ability to account for
multinational corporations or be able to sustain a welfare state. More targeted in his comments is that that liberalism’s
approach, that of science, has not developed effective policies to address the ongoing
human/social problems that keep afflicting the West.
For example, while the loss
of manufacturing jobs in the West to developing, low wage countries – mostly in
Asia – has left behind segments of those western countries in dire economic straits,
none of the western countries seem to devise the policies that would meet that
challenge. Here is one account of this lack
of development:
Even if the loss of manufacturing jobs in advance economies may
have contributed relatively little to aggregate inequality in advance
economies, the negative consequences appear to have been sizable and persistent
for some groups of workers and their communities. Expanding access to programmes that facilitate
the reskilling of displace workers and reduce the costs of their reallocation,
as well as strengthening safety nets and targeted redistribution policies, can
help soften the blow imposed by structural transformation and help ensure that
the gains of productivity growth are shared more broadly.[3]
While this transformation
has been going on since the seventies, this cited account was written in
2018. In all that time no meaningful
program has been developed to provide the reforms that would reestablish those
workers’ prior standing. They, the dispossessed,
instead have become prime candidates for radicalization.
Lasch writes, “The natural sciences, having made exaggerated
claims for themselves, now hasten to announce that science offer no miracle
cures for social problems.”[4] Why this interruption to a history of ongoing
successes and advancements? According to
Lasch, one change has been significantly less reliance on the study of history.
And he not only points out that
there is a lack of objectified history (which scientific bias would prefer),
but a history soaked in “moral dignity, patriotism, and political optimism.” That is a history that not only tells of the past
but does it with a dose of encouragement, praise, or castigation when a
historical tale merits such an account.
The assumption was that before the post-World War II period,
the people were able and disposed to learn from the past, but now the message
is that the past is irrelevant. It stems
from the notion that now is modern and then was, well, then and irrelevant to
modern challenges. And this sense for contemporary
conditions and their qualitative qualities seems to have affected those in
power up and down the political power grid.
And when problems are not fixed or are not even meaningfully addressed,
distrust by those in harm’s way follows.
Recently, after giving conservatives a healthy dose of
criticism, this writer pointed out that liberals have their own shortcomings as
well. He then stated that that criticism
waited for another venue to express some of that message. Here it is.
Yes, over reliance on government has led to the diminution of local
governance. This nation, in many areas,
has experienced over-governance by empowered, far-off bureaucracies with
dehumanizing regulations about how local things should be done. Please do not interpret this with a non-nuanced
eye.
It is not an either/or issue, but one of degree. In a world of multinational corporations with
enormous power, it is often the case that only central governments can meet the
challenges they, the corporations, create or ignore. The trick – as it is with most of life – is to
hit the right combination. But there is
more to this general problem area than merely not reading history. And addressing that other area or areas will
be done at some later posting.
But for now, this posting leaves the reader with this quote
from Lasch:
The inadequacy of solutions dictated from above now forces people
to invent solutions dictated from below.
Disenchantment with governmental bureaucracies has begun to extend to
corporate bureaucracies as well – the real centers of power in contemporary
society. In small towns and crowded
urban neighborhoods, even in suburbs, men and women have initiated modest
experiments in cooperation, designed to defend their rights against the
corporations and the state. The “flight
from politics,” as it appears to the managerial political elite, may signify citizen’s
growing unwillingness to take part in the political system as a consumer of
prefabricated spectacles … not a retreat from politics at all but the
beginnings of a general political revolt.[5]
Well, now thirty plus
years later, as events in Texas this last week indicate – and while the
problems with the power there is due to the mismanagement of a state, not a national
entity – that revolt still has a way to go.
Perhaps
if the states’ civics curricula were guided not by a natural rights point of
view – one that blends in with Lasch’s observation for a preference of objectified
studies – but one guided by federation theory, then, at least, how young people
are taught about government and politics might help.[6] It has come to this writer’s attention that
the state of Florida is going to consider in its legislature’s next session a
mandated change in its public schools’ civics curriculum to offer a more local
emphasis. Hopefully, that comes about,
and the resulting change will be effective.
If
change along the lines that Lasch suggests does not take place, what then? He goes on to address the way this whole
current situation creates the conditions that generates a generation of radicals
such as those who took it upon themselves to attack the US Capitol. As hinted to above and reflecting the reason
this writer presently took up this topic, when this blog again addresses it, it
will share Lasch’s attempt at predicting in more detail.
[1]
Christopher
Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism:
American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York,
NY: W. W. Norton and Company, 1979).
[2] One can
see classical liberalism as a main element of the natural rights view, that his
blog claims has taken prevalence since World War II.
[3] Oya Ceasun and Bertrand Gruss, “The Declining Share
of Manufacturing Jobs,” Vox(EU)/CEPR (May 25, 2018), accessed February 23,
2021, https://voxeu.org/article/declining-share-manufacturing-jobs . British
spelling.
[4] Ibid., xiv.
[5] Ibid., xv.
[6] If the reader agrees, this writer’s book, Toward a
Federated Nation, might assist educators and interested citizens to bring
about such a shift. See Robert
Gutierrez, Toward a Federated Nation:
Implementing National Civics Standards (Tallahassee, FL: Gravitas/Civics Books, 2020). Available through Amazon.
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