US History 1973 - 2014 Commonplace Book: Lecture 8, Society and Culture in the 1970s (Con't)

[There is a] growing despair of changing society, even of understanding it, which also underlies the cult of expanded consciousness, health and personal "growth" so prevalent today. After the political turmoil of the sixties, Americans have retreated to purely personal preoccupations. Having no hope of improving their lives in any of the ways that matter, people have convinced themselves that what matters is psychic self-improvement: getting in touch with their feelings, eating health food, taking lessons in ballet or belly-dancing, immersing themselves in the wisdom of the East, jogging, learning how to "relate," overcoming the "fear of pleasure." Harmless in themselves, these pursuits, elevated to a program and wrapped in the rhetoric of authenticity and awareness, signify a retreat from politics and a repudiation of the recent past.... To live for the moment is the prevailing passion -- to live for yourself, not for your predecessors or posterity.

— Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (1979)

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