Half my life time ago, I encountered the writings of Christopher Lasch — a historian and social critic — through the pages of his book “The Culture of Narcissism.” His words were hypnotic, exposing me to a worldview that I knew instinctively was accurate, while at the same time drawing me into the company of many more intelligent and better educated people who, like me, found his opaque style and complex mental meanderings to sometimes be as confusing as they were enlightening.
I believe the weight of his worldview rests on a reverence for the past, which he saw as “ … a political and psychological treasury from which we draw the reserves … that we need to cope with the future.”
Today, I reread portions of the book Lasch wrote three years before his death, in 1994 — “The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics.” It was a “eureka moment,” because I now realize my perspectives regarding the plight of humanity, are greatly influenced by the seeds that Lasch planted in my mind 40 years ago, the most salient of which is the realization that not all change is progress.
Lasch warns against nostalgia, while calling for an honest memory of the good and the bad. To the extent that there was a time in which people had a stronger sense of belonging, of taking pride in their ability to provide for one’s family and for caring about one’s community — that was good. Lasch suggested that the good of the past rested on “ … its understanding that everything has its price, its respect for limits, its skepticism about progress.” He also noted that small proprietors, artisans, tradespeople, and farmers were “ … more often victims of ‘improvement’ than beneficiaries (who) are unlikely to mistake the promised land of progress for the true and only heaven.”
Which brings us to the most existential of all problems; global climate change. The relevance of Lasch to the issue of climate change is that it seems highly unlikely that people will be able to reduce the rate of global warming while much of the world continues to maintain a consumer-based economy: one in which more and more products and services are pumped out to satiate our insatiable appetite for stuff we do not need.
We have allowed ourselves to be the willing cheerleaders for huge corporations whose primary purpose is to maximize profits for their stockholders. Whatever they make, we buy, marveling at the new technologies that have made our lives so grand. Lamenting abandonment of the wisdom of the past, Lasch observes that “Insatiable desire, formerly condemned as a source of frustration, unhappiness and spiritual instability, came to be seen as a powerful stimulus to economic development.”
On Aug. 9, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an agency of the United Nations, issued a more than 3,000-page report, which concluded that “ … unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions (controlling climate warming) will be beyond reach.”
I am not naïve enough to believe that everyone will come easily to accepting the science that informed IPCC’s report on climate change. And that scares the living hell out of me. I have no solutions to offer, but in keeping with my understanding of Lasch, I urge that we average folks come together to define the problems that need to be resolved.
How can we motivate each other to give up the “ … luxuries (we have transformed) into necessities?” Our survival may depend on our ability to create a hospitable post-industrial-capitalist economy. In my view, that means consuming less; encouraging small, locally-owned businesses; and ensuring that the “new capitalism” will enable workers to stay in the communities they love, while being able to earn a living wage.
As Pogo said “We have met the enemy and they are us.” It will take more than paper straws and solar panels to end global warming, yet we must each do our part. The problem is that our individual efforts are analogous to a tug-of-war between elephants and puppies. Because we are a community, we puppies might be able to hold our own. But in order to prevail, we have to convince a few elephants to cross over to our side.
I believe that Christopher Lasch would agree that our puppy power represents another good thing from the past — a willingness to pull together as members of a kind, loving and concerned community. Such a state is “The True and Only Heaven.”
Jim Palermo lives in Southampton.