Narcissism’s Enemies: God, Work, Family (Prophets of Narcissism: Christopher Lasch, 1979, (lecture)

Jordan Peterson faithfully echoes every single argument Christopher Lasch has made in the 1970s.

The Narcissistic Tide/Epidemic: It is safe to define narcissism as a shift of emphasis from substance and essence to appearance and spectacle (Guy Debord’s “Society of the Spectacle”). To do so means to render narcissism an organizing principle of the entirety of our civilization. Even fields which seem immune to the vagaries of the human psyche are subject to narcissism.

The rising tide of narcissism is compensatory: as social institutions crumble, role models are dethroned, gatekeepers are decried and derided, narratives unravel, and communities dissipate, people find themselves in the throes of disintermediated atomization within increasingly anomic societies. Existential loneliness in a senseless universe conflicts with the primordial, atavistic need to be seen. We all struggle to be noticed at any cost to ourselves and to others because the gaze of the Other affirms our very quiddity and survival.

"The new narcissist is haunted not by guilt but by anxiety. He seeks not to inflict his own certainties on others but to find a meaning in life. Liberated from the superstitions of the past, he doubts even the reality of his own existence. Superficially relaxed and tolerant, he finds little use for dogmas of racial and ethnic purity but at the same time forfeits the security of group loyalties and regards everyone as a rival for the favors conferred by a paternalistic state. His sexual attitudes are permissive rather than puritanical, even though his emancipation from ancient taboos brings him no sexual peace. Fiercely competitive in his demand for approval and acclaim, he distrusts competition because he associates it unconsciously with an unbridled urge to destroy. Hence he repudiates the competitive ideologies that flourished at an earlier stage of capitalist development and distrusts even their limited expression in sports and games. He extols cooperation and teamwork while harboring deeply antisocial impulses. He praises respect for rules and regulations in the secret belief that they do not apply to himself. Acquisitive in the sense that his cravings have no limits, he does not accumulate goods and provisions against the future, in the manner of the acquisitive individualist of nineteenth-century political economy, but demands immediate gratification and lives in a state of restless, perpetually unsatisfied desire."

(Christopher Lasch - The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an age of Diminishing Expectations, 1979)

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