[2Wycked]

From Politics To Self-Examination

This section made me cringe a bit because I saw myself reflected in it. I used to be a hardcore Republican and when I discovered politics in the 2004 election cycle, I was hooked. Although, in that election, I voted for Kerry, I became a voracious consumer of political works and political analysis.

What politics affords is a socially-approved way to express repressed rage. Politics in America have gotten worse not because of anything but the retrenchment of narcissism in society. Lasch demonstrates this, as he analyzes 60's radical's such as Paul Zweig and Jerry Rubin. Both men display vague levels of self-awareness, but expose what ultimately becomes of a young narcissist aging and approaching that dreaded age of 30. The youthful rage expressed is not looked upon favorably by society for older people, so the outlets for rage recede and new defenses need to be erected. Therapy is most obvious step. Look at people obsessed with gestalt therapy hypnotism, sex therapy, etc. - they are predominately in their 30's and 40's. See what is going on here? Society approves of people finding themselves in their 30's and 40's, so narcissists move from rageful politics to more subdued narcissistic approaches.

The problem inherent here is that these people need to build a rickety bridge from their politics to their therapy. You see that here in my writing. I try, often in vain, to tie psychoanalysis to my politics. Recall my goofy Cabin In The Woods thread. See the example here? Very forced and seemed to be driven my desire to port out my rage via psychoanalysis of society that really is more political than anything else.

The most important part of this section is this fusion of politics and therapy. Both men talk of putting off personal change until after the revolution. Sound familiar? That is what feminists claim. The problem is these approaches drown personal responsibility for failures in collective political approaches that obviate personal autonomy. These approaches to insert politics everywhere in society (the personal is political) results in a destruction of high culture and popular culture and also destroys true political and intellectual debate in wider society.



Confession and Anti-Confession

Lasch, in this section, talks about how modern writing has degenerated into an adventure of denial of personal responsibility and blurring the lines of reality and fiction. Lasch points out many writers simply rely on their fame when writing and simply provide only tracts of text that simply talk about themselves, with no critical insight and suggests that the author is hiding more than they are disclosing.

He points out that modern writers often have passages that implicate the reader in the act of writing itself - are you really that stupid to believe what I say? The stunning levels of self-absorption are defense mechanisms of deflecting criticism and avoiding personal responsibility. Authors of the used the unreliable narrator to juxtapose the author's more accurate view of the story with the partially-blinded narrator. No more. That distinction has been collapsed and the modern author IS the partially-blinded narrator. What this does is the writer asks the reader to believe him simply because the story might be true if the reader chooses to believe him. See the passing of the buck?

As such, confessional writing is not confessional at all but transferring responsibility for perceiving their writing purely to the reader and disclaims culpability for anything written about. Their inner search reveals nothing, a blank slate. Which is a reflection of modern society - a massive void within.

The Void Within

America's obsession with fame and celebrities is based out of this terrible void within which results in people craving fame and social status to make up for their lack of personal contentment. They show an aversion for the herd and have narcissistic dreams of fame and glory. The banality of everyday life represents an inability to deal with personal discontentment that stems from a lack of solid personal identity.

Current approaches to life has shattered a person's id to apologize for its grandiosity but this approach also makes loss and failure unbearable. People with ordinary talents can't achieve fame or glory, so they bask in the glow of stars. They identity with stars that reflect who they could never be. These attempts to vicariously live through those more talented is also going to fail and usually results in people cycling - throughout their life - with celebrities they identify with. When they ditch one celebrity, they devalue them greatly.

Lasch uses radical liberal and feminist Susan Stern as an example. Stern has major rage issues and uses fame to port out her political rage. She even painted an 18-foot hamster (woman) on her home with flowing blond hair and had a burning American flag coming out of her vagina - she wanted to create a tall, blond American woman dispatching with the evils of America. Her life was never about politics, but using politics to deal with her personal rage. Her memoirs have a shocking lack of real political analysis and display politics was merely about dealing with her festering rage.

He uses Paul Zweig to show how the inner void can never be changed from without, but only from within. Fame, lust and therapy can never work if you don't accept what exactly you are doing in your head and in the world around you. He notes Zweig uses therapy in a self-absorbed way and that leads to another section.

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The Progressive Critique Of Privatism

This an important section as he lays out why exactly commentary on privilege and power in society by mainstream figures is always wrong.

Commenter Sita on my RoK article on American masculinity showed this off. She completely dismissed out-of-hand Dr. Glover's approaches to helping beta males, saying that such navel-gazing ways are just for pussy-footing liberals who don't really want to face how misogynistic society is. Really? She is admitting she has given up on healing herself and having a robust inner life. She also believes that men cannot change and misogyny is so pervasive it cannot be cured. Trade misogyny for narcissism and we might have a discussion. She couldn't get over the fact men don't collectively hate women because she needs that to be true to operate in society.As previously mentioned, she will most likely dabble in all sorts of New Age therapies in her 30's and middle age.

Liberal critiques about therapy usually focus on privilege and class analysis. A common complaint is that the craze of the well-to-do over therapy is born out of class complacency. Completely wrong. The desire for therapy stems from desperation not boredom. Common criticisms are based out of accusations of racism, homophobia, etc. The main thrust - how can those with "so much" have so many problems?

It is the narcissistic idea money or privilege can make up for the poverty of human relations. Poor people have many problems, as well. Lacking class privilege doesn't help them or make them more aware of issues in society, but simply that they have to live in the moment more than richer folks because every day is a struggle.

What middle-class and up folks are representing is war on all against all in modern society. The desperate concern for survival of the poor has now been ported to the upper classes. The blurring of social and personal issues has intensified issues in society and have resulted in therapeutic approaches that ratchet up personal issues as people are encouraged to not invest in others, live for the moment and downplay the importance of love and friendship.

The Critique Of Privatism: Richard Sennet On The Fall Of The Public Man

In this section, Lasch summarizes Sennet's arguments that he simply wants a return to the "imperial man" of the 18th century. He has a great fondness for Tocqueville and idealizes bourgeois liberalism. Like many social commenters, Sennet assumes too much rationality on the part of humans, much less ones born in America.

He idealizes rational self-interest and a pure division between the private and public worlds. Sennet fails to acknowledge the public and private have always been necessarily tied to one another and his idea that men were purely rational is flat out wrong. However, what is most interesting is Sennet's conceptualization of the private and public worlds.

What Sennet fails to recognize is that the collapse of the distinction between private and public worlds was a result of the public world intervening in the private world, not the reverse. Both liberals and men like Sennet seem to think the problem is the invasion of the public world by the private world, with excessive romanticism, preoccupation with self-discovery and collapse of romantic relationships. They are wrong. It is the public invasion of the private world that has resulted in a decay of the inner soul of Americans.

Romance becomes more warlike, friendships dry up and marriages fail at greater rates. We are increasing becoming more alienated from one another and that results in more desperation for Americans. The sleight of hand isn't ignoring social issues or presenting false ones, but by obscuring the true origins of social narcissism.