Think About It 022: CHRISTOPHER LASCH

The university remains a diffuse, shapeless, and permissive institution that has absorbed the major currents of cultural modernism and reduced them to a watery blend, a mind-emptying ideology of cultural revolution, personal fulfillment, and creative alienation… Not only does higher education destroy the students' minds; it incapacitates them emotionally as well, rendering them incapable of confronting experience without benefit of textbooks, grades, and pre-digested points of view.  Far from preparing students to live 'authentically,' the higher learning in America leaves them unable to perform the simplest task –– to prepare a meal or go to a party or get into bed with a member of the opposite sex –– without seeking academic instruction.  The only thing it leaves to chance is higher learning.

The Culture of Narcissism (1979)


 

Use the link below to read a 1991 interview with North American sociologist, historian and cultural critic CHRISTOPHER LASCH:

 

http://brandon.multics.org/library/Christopher%20Lasch/car_interview.html

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 
Think About It 065: CHRISTOPHER LASCH

 
Think About It 015: NOAM CHOMSKY

 
Think About It 019: JOHN PILGER