5. Christopher Lasch, American "culture of narcissism" and the long term effects of the September 11 atrocities Lasch and his work are increasingly relevant in post September America. This is partly because the likes of bin Laden hurl at America primitive and coarse versions of Lasch's critique. They accuse America of being a failed civilization, not merely of meddling ignorantly and sacriligeously in the affairs of Islam (and the rest of the world). They fervently believe that America exports this contagious failure to other cultures and societies (through its idolatrous mass media and inferior culture industries) and thus "infects" them with the virus of its own terminal decline. It is important to understand the left wing roots of this cancerous rendition of social criticism. Lasch wrote: "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) There is no single Lasch. This chronicler of culture, did so mainly by chronicling his inner turmoil, conflicting ideas and ideologies, emotional upheavals, and intellectual vicissitudes. In this sense, of (courageous) self-documentation, Mr. Lasch epitomized Narcissism, was the quintessential Narcissist, the better positioned to criticize the phenomenon.