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The Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the Breaking Point
In a classic indictment of American individualism and isolationism, Philip Slater analyzes the great ills of modern society-violence, competitiveness, inequality, and the national 'addiction' to technology.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
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1303 people want to read
About the author
Philip Slater
20 books18 followersPhilip Slater was an author, actor, playwright, and sociologist. He taught sociology at Harvard, Brandeis, and the University of California at Santa Cruz. He obtained a doctorate from Harvard.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/boo...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/boo...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
September 14, 2010
Oh, this was just very, very good. I loved his ideas and his prose. It may sound strange, but after some of the other things I've been reading, I actually found this more uplifting. He likes people, and he sympathizes with how we got into this mess, while still being very clear about: hey, yeah, this is an enormous fucking disaster. I liked the guy.
Read
April 13, 2008This is a really great diagnosis of a historical moment, but it's still applicable today. So man of the problems that Slater describes remain endemic: the bullshit libertarian ideal, the failings of child-rearing technique, the rough transition from modernity to postmodernity, the Oedipal apparatus of American society, etc. etc. Recommended for any lover of sociology, psychology, or American studies.
February 26, 2019
I suspect I want to read a later version of this classic work that has a piece about it from Todd Gitlin. I let someone borrow my copy but I insisted I get it back. I am glad I did because I have browsed it again and again over the years. It is a lovely work.
June 30, 2017
In the wake of the relative success of this book (in a year - 1970 - which was riddled with this kind of state-of-the-species musing), Philip Slater decided to turn his back on academia and live a simpler life. These days academics are being assisted externally (via their wages) in achieving a simpler life, but at the time the tenured academic lived pretty darn well. The reason, once you've reached the end of this still rather eye-opening book is pretty clear: Slater saw where we were all headed and decided to opt for a different route. He may have been "helped" in that decision by some hefty royalty cheques and the prospect of life as a thoughtful Cassandra-styled scribe, but from his arguments drips the essence of conviction. As he writes "Americans love bigness, mostly because they feel so small. They feel small because they’re unconnected, without a place. They try to overcome that smallness by associating themselves with bigness—big projects, big organizations, big government, mass markets, mass media, “nationwide, worldwide.” But it's that very same bigness that rips away their sense of connectedness and place and makes them feel small. A vicious circle."
And they're pretty sharp arguments he puts together, as well as being barbed. Slater rounds on modern US culture, but he might as well be speaking for the developed world as a whole. And while the book predates the internet by a good 25 years, Slater still hits the nail on the head as to where our obsession with individualism is likely to lead and leave us. In elegant, memorable phrases, he posits the chains that our way of life - ostensibly so free and full of opportunity - places around us. He sees it clearly: "We are, as a people, perturbed by our inability to anticipate the consequences of our acts, but we still wait optimistically for some magic telegram, informing us that the tangled skein of misery and self-deception into which we have woven ourselves has vanished in the night."
And now happiness is our bargaining chip and the counterweight in our Faustian pact, while the medium of exchange is choice. As he puts it "Choice is the major issue: Americans make more conscious choices per day, with fewer givens, more ambiguous criteria, and less environmental or social stability, than any people in history"
As the book's title suggests, the key lies in our falling prey to the seductive blandishments of individualism: "Individualism is rooted in the attempt to deny the reality of human interdependence. One of the major goals of technology in America is to “free” us from the necessity of relating to, submitting to, depending upon, or controlling other people.* Unfortunately, the more we have succeeded in doing this, the more we have felt disconnected, bored, lonely, unprotected, unnecessary, and unsafe."
And those blandishments are sent to us through the desire for endless striving which is just that: endless.
"Hunger, thirst, and sexual desire in pure form can be slaked, but the desire for a body type that was invented by cartoonists cannot. Neither can the desire for fame, power, or wealth. These are invidious needs; they are satisfied only in relation to the deprivation of others. Furthermore, they’re purely symbolic and hence have no endpoint. A man hooked on fame or power will never stop striving because there is no way to gratify a desire with a symbol
And while we may have heard this from any number of dissenting voices in the intervening years, the truth is firstly that we have coexisted with it too long to laugh any of it off, and secondly Slater has a keen understanding of all the elements he pokes into. His fearless critique also betrays his fondness for what this convivial, collaborative ape could achieve with a little more self-knowledge.
It is now becoming clear that this goes beyond mere right/left bromides. The consumer way of life that has been presented as "normal" is indeed anything but. The "wealth" that we argue is being spread around by it is in fact more illusory than we have ever been willing to accept. All it would take is a little serious accounting of the many externalities involved to come to the conclusion that this uppity ape named human is as deluded as she is ingenious. Slater mentions just this fact, a full 47 years ago (actually the version I read was published in 1976 and contains a number of additions and edits by the author), and nothing has been done in the meantime to redress this flaw in our culture. The true result awaits us a little further down the road. Perhaps our ingenuity will step and find a hitherto-unexpected out, but we'd be naive to consider that there won't be some kind of collateral damage.
And while we're at it we can just shake our heads at some of the cognitive dissonance we increasingly see as normal:
"The same man who chuckles and sentimentalizes over a happy-go-lucky hero in a film would view his real-life counterpart as frivolous and irresponsible, and suburbanites who philosophized over the back fence with complete sincerity about their “dog-eat-dog-world,” and what-is-it-all-for, and you-can’t-take-it-with-you, and success-doesn’t-make-you-happy-it-just-gives-you-ulcers-and-a-heart-condition, were enraged in the sixties when their children began to pay serious attention to these ideas."
The book is worth reading and worth thinking about, even all these years later. Maybe there are no answers that can suit animals such as we, but at least we can try to reconfigure the purpose at some point by asking the right questions.
And they're pretty sharp arguments he puts together, as well as being barbed. Slater rounds on modern US culture, but he might as well be speaking for the developed world as a whole. And while the book predates the internet by a good 25 years, Slater still hits the nail on the head as to where our obsession with individualism is likely to lead and leave us. In elegant, memorable phrases, he posits the chains that our way of life - ostensibly so free and full of opportunity - places around us. He sees it clearly: "We are, as a people, perturbed by our inability to anticipate the consequences of our acts, but we still wait optimistically for some magic telegram, informing us that the tangled skein of misery and self-deception into which we have woven ourselves has vanished in the night."
And now happiness is our bargaining chip and the counterweight in our Faustian pact, while the medium of exchange is choice. As he puts it "Choice is the major issue: Americans make more conscious choices per day, with fewer givens, more ambiguous criteria, and less environmental or social stability, than any people in history"
As the book's title suggests, the key lies in our falling prey to the seductive blandishments of individualism: "Individualism is rooted in the attempt to deny the reality of human interdependence. One of the major goals of technology in America is to “free” us from the necessity of relating to, submitting to, depending upon, or controlling other people.* Unfortunately, the more we have succeeded in doing this, the more we have felt disconnected, bored, lonely, unprotected, unnecessary, and unsafe."
And those blandishments are sent to us through the desire for endless striving which is just that: endless.
"Hunger, thirst, and sexual desire in pure form can be slaked, but the desire for a body type that was invented by cartoonists cannot. Neither can the desire for fame, power, or wealth. These are invidious needs; they are satisfied only in relation to the deprivation of others. Furthermore, they’re purely symbolic and hence have no endpoint. A man hooked on fame or power will never stop striving because there is no way to gratify a desire with a symbol
And while we may have heard this from any number of dissenting voices in the intervening years, the truth is firstly that we have coexisted with it too long to laugh any of it off, and secondly Slater has a keen understanding of all the elements he pokes into. His fearless critique also betrays his fondness for what this convivial, collaborative ape could achieve with a little more self-knowledge.
It is now becoming clear that this goes beyond mere right/left bromides. The consumer way of life that has been presented as "normal" is indeed anything but. The "wealth" that we argue is being spread around by it is in fact more illusory than we have ever been willing to accept. All it would take is a little serious accounting of the many externalities involved to come to the conclusion that this uppity ape named human is as deluded as she is ingenious. Slater mentions just this fact, a full 47 years ago (actually the version I read was published in 1976 and contains a number of additions and edits by the author), and nothing has been done in the meantime to redress this flaw in our culture. The true result awaits us a little further down the road. Perhaps our ingenuity will step and find a hitherto-unexpected out, but we'd be naive to consider that there won't be some kind of collateral damage.
And while we're at it we can just shake our heads at some of the cognitive dissonance we increasingly see as normal:
"The same man who chuckles and sentimentalizes over a happy-go-lucky hero in a film would view his real-life counterpart as frivolous and irresponsible, and suburbanites who philosophized over the back fence with complete sincerity about their “dog-eat-dog-world,” and what-is-it-all-for, and you-can’t-take-it-with-you, and success-doesn’t-make-you-happy-it-just-gives-you-ulcers-and-a-heart-condition, were enraged in the sixties when their children began to pay serious attention to these ideas."
The book is worth reading and worth thinking about, even all these years later. Maybe there are no answers that can suit animals such as we, but at least we can try to reconfigure the purpose at some point by asking the right questions.
June 27, 2011
Even though this was written in 1970, sadly enough the social commentary is as applicable today. This book does a great job of dissecting the American psyche and pointing out what needs to change for us to survive as a viable community. While some of the examples are a bit dated (there's a lengthy discussion of the Vietnam war and frequent unironic use of the term Hippie), the commentary is no less relevant, considering we are still entering into these wars with the absurd notion that we are doing good by killing people. There was a great discusson that I found relevant to the animal rights movement and our struggles with how best to incite change. The author talks about people taking actions to encourage further repression so that people will finally get fed up about how bad it has truly gotten and will work to change things.
I find this comparable to the animal rightists who do not want improvement in animal welfare for fear that if things get minutely better for the animals, all motivation to end the use of animals will evaporate. He comments: "The 'make things worse' approach is not only not strategic, it is not even revolutionary - it seeks unconsciously to preserve, while at the same time discrediting, parental authority. The emotional logic behind it might be expressed as: 'if things get bad enough They will see that it is unfair.' As every radical knows, radical movements are always plagued with people who want to lose, want to be stopped, want in effect to be put under protective custody. This is not an argument for moderation - taking an extreme position can be a winning as well as losing stance. But when changes in the desired direction are opposed because they keep things from getting bad enough, we can assume at the very least that the attitude toward change is highly ambivalent. The make-it-worse position...argues that 'if you go too far They will turn against you.' [It] view[s] public opinion as a kind of judicial Good Parent, and exaggerate[s] the importance of transient public sentiment. [It] underestimate[s] the importance, for creating change, of prolonge exposure to new ideas. There is no such thing as a situation so intolerable that human beings must necessarily rise up against it. People can bear anything, and the longer it exists the more placidly they will bear it. The job of the revolutionary is to show people that things can be better and to move them directly and unceasingly toward that goal. The better things get the more aware people become that they need not tolerate the injustices and miseries that remain."
Granted, he's talking about miseries imposed on humans, but I think the analysis applies equally to inciting change with regard to our treatment of animals. I've always understood why certain animal rightists oppose welfare improvements - the concern that by agreeing to these minor improvements we are sanctioning the whole idea of using animals for our own benefit, but I've never been willing to forgo minor improvements to animals that are currently living and breathing - even though minor,for animals in pure misery, the littlest improvement must be a godsend - for the goal of one day being able to somehow convince everyone in the world to give up using animals for their own gain. Slater's analysis leads me to believe that from a tactical perspective, the all or nothing approach is not the one that will deliver us the change we want.
This was the only portion of the book that I found applicable to the animal rights movement. However, the book as a whole was very inciteful as to how American's currently think, what's wrong with it, and less so, how best to go about changing it.
I find this comparable to the animal rightists who do not want improvement in animal welfare for fear that if things get minutely better for the animals, all motivation to end the use of animals will evaporate. He comments: "The 'make things worse' approach is not only not strategic, it is not even revolutionary - it seeks unconsciously to preserve, while at the same time discrediting, parental authority. The emotional logic behind it might be expressed as: 'if things get bad enough They will see that it is unfair.' As every radical knows, radical movements are always plagued with people who want to lose, want to be stopped, want in effect to be put under protective custody. This is not an argument for moderation - taking an extreme position can be a winning as well as losing stance. But when changes in the desired direction are opposed because they keep things from getting bad enough, we can assume at the very least that the attitude toward change is highly ambivalent. The make-it-worse position...argues that 'if you go too far They will turn against you.' [It] view[s] public opinion as a kind of judicial Good Parent, and exaggerate[s] the importance of transient public sentiment. [It] underestimate[s] the importance, for creating change, of prolonge exposure to new ideas. There is no such thing as a situation so intolerable that human beings must necessarily rise up against it. People can bear anything, and the longer it exists the more placidly they will bear it. The job of the revolutionary is to show people that things can be better and to move them directly and unceasingly toward that goal. The better things get the more aware people become that they need not tolerate the injustices and miseries that remain."
Granted, he's talking about miseries imposed on humans, but I think the analysis applies equally to inciting change with regard to our treatment of animals. I've always understood why certain animal rightists oppose welfare improvements - the concern that by agreeing to these minor improvements we are sanctioning the whole idea of using animals for our own benefit, but I've never been willing to forgo minor improvements to animals that are currently living and breathing - even though minor,for animals in pure misery, the littlest improvement must be a godsend - for the goal of one day being able to somehow convince everyone in the world to give up using animals for their own gain. Slater's analysis leads me to believe that from a tactical perspective, the all or nothing approach is not the one that will deliver us the change we want.
This was the only portion of the book that I found applicable to the animal rights movement. However, the book as a whole was very inciteful as to how American's currently think, what's wrong with it, and less so, how best to go about changing it.
May 1, 2014
This book, first published in 1970 and updated in 1976, provides an interpretation of the sweeping cultural changes which visited American culture beginning in the 1960s and forever altered attitudes towards work, family, women, cities, and American history. It’s an academic literary document which critiques the American character and offers a few suggestions for reform which would broaden and deepen happiness throughout society.
Philip Slater begins by contrasting individualism, which he points out is the American fantasy, with interdependence and cooperation, shown to be the American reality whenever progress has been made, not necessarily a frequent or inevitable event in our nation’s past. He proposes that the vaunted independence lauded by our society tends to produce uniformity owing to the prescription for what is desirable being handed down to all by the culture. The freedom to independently pursue identical ends results in identical actors who share identical values, not a society of unique individuals who work together cooperatively.
Slater excels at probing paradoxes such as this, using his wry humour to debunk experts from economists to “Intelligence” test makers and to expose the fruitless waste inherent in consumerism and war. His analysis is aimed at understanding the American character and the fissure he probes to get at it is that between the the youth of the 60s and their parents who, equipped with Dr Spock’s Baby & Child Care, created a generation encouraged to be spontaneous but were then shocked when the younger generation refused to get on the same treadmill as their parents.
While not offering up his own system, and with just a few largely idealistic proposals to alleviate the problems he describes, Slater does offer up a large number of brilliant insights into the culture on issues as varied as privacy, urban planning, and gender. Its an indicator of just how carefully observed and profound they are that they continue to be relevant and spot on decades after the initial publication of this book.
Philip Slater begins by contrasting individualism, which he points out is the American fantasy, with interdependence and cooperation, shown to be the American reality whenever progress has been made, not necessarily a frequent or inevitable event in our nation’s past. He proposes that the vaunted independence lauded by our society tends to produce uniformity owing to the prescription for what is desirable being handed down to all by the culture. The freedom to independently pursue identical ends results in identical actors who share identical values, not a society of unique individuals who work together cooperatively.
Slater excels at probing paradoxes such as this, using his wry humour to debunk experts from economists to “Intelligence” test makers and to expose the fruitless waste inherent in consumerism and war. His analysis is aimed at understanding the American character and the fissure he probes to get at it is that between the the youth of the 60s and their parents who, equipped with Dr Spock’s Baby & Child Care, created a generation encouraged to be spontaneous but were then shocked when the younger generation refused to get on the same treadmill as their parents.
While not offering up his own system, and with just a few largely idealistic proposals to alleviate the problems he describes, Slater does offer up a large number of brilliant insights into the culture on issues as varied as privacy, urban planning, and gender. Its an indicator of just how carefully observed and profound they are that they continue to be relevant and spot on decades after the initial publication of this book.
December 20, 2015
I was confused sometimes with Slater's tightly wound language. There were some snaky paragraphs and sentences that should have been re-written for clarity's sake, leaving ponderous points fairly missed. (I have the original 1970 publication) However, I mostly enjoyed the read. And I really enjoyed the sentiment. Despite the Viet Nam era spacetime, this book has got me thinking about how I can make changes in my life to regain intimacy with myself, my fellow man, and love for may community and my country, which is, as the title well captures, currently at an all-time low.
November 25, 2023
Extract : transitions are always fought with risk and discomfort and insecurity, but we do not enjoy the luxury of postponement. No mater how difficult it seems to engage in radical change when all is changing anyway, the risk must be taken
P. 133
@kitry : yeah I see yr. point, after anticonsumerist rants on these values. .. he gets head on, with a strive towards a collective identity
The one we've lost, according t him, due to our technological advancement
P. 133
@kitry : yeah I see yr. point, after anticonsumerist rants on these values. .. he gets head on, with a strive towards a collective identity
The one we've lost, according t him, due to our technological advancement
April 24, 2009
Quite possibly the best book I have ever read. The introduction grabbed me and I didn't put it down until I finished.
Currently reading
January 9, 2010On rereading, it still explains what's wrong with American culture.
September 27, 2012
The information is as necessary today as it was in the 60's, this should be required reading.
November 4, 2013
Although the wars and technology have changed, this is rematkably current and astute for a 40 year old book. Worth a read, worth a buy.
April 28, 2018
Read this book in college-thought it was great. Very prescient to our time. Found out there is a later edition- so I plan to read it again.
Read
December 15, 2024This book from 1970 makes a compelling case for how Americans have found themselves so isolated. Slater explores the erosion of our connections by covering topics that include the detached killings in Vietnam from aerial weapons, the suburban housewife's isolation in child rearing, the tears in communities brought on by a reliance on cars, the danger of instant pleasures (1970, remember...), replacing people with technology as a method for contentment (1970, remember...), the extreme emphasis placed on romantic relationships so as to make any other connection almost seem null and void (1970, remember...), amongst other things.
I'm not knowledgeable enough in areas like anthropology and sociology to attest to how *true* this book is overall, but it seems well argued and the parts of it that do resonate, do so fiercely. So much of the book rings true based on my experiences and observations, and I find myself taken by how insightful Slater was given the year it was published. I would have liked to see him live long enough to make a revised version of the book in an age dominated by social media and increasing isolation despite our instant access to superficial connection.
I'm not knowledgeable enough in areas like anthropology and sociology to attest to how *true* this book is overall, but it seems well argued and the parts of it that do resonate, do so fiercely. So much of the book rings true based on my experiences and observations, and I find myself taken by how insightful Slater was given the year it was published. I would have liked to see him live long enough to make a revised version of the book in an age dominated by social media and increasing isolation despite our instant access to superficial connection.
August 9, 2020
Slater is one of those simpletons who are endowed with a godly view of things. What about those who don't fit his simple model? Well, those aren't "true" Americans, a nationalistic variation of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
October 23, 2025
Still relevant mostly but the occasional sexist remark and the incessant implorement of unnecessary multisyllabic words felt very performative matcha labubu. Then again, it was the 70s.
September 13, 2025
I found this book by chance while browsing the shelves of a used bookstore. The great value of used bookstores, beside preserving some very good books, is that they provide such moments of serendipity. Browsing online just isn’t the same as pulling an intriguing tome off the shelf, opening to a random page and having it grab you.
Though Slater’s The Pursuit of Loneliness was a bestseller when it was published back in 1970, I had never heard of it. Slater, a sociology professor, examines the new values and attitudes of the sixties counter-culture movement against the more established values and attitudes of earlier generations of Americans. That might make the book sound like a dated study of a bygone era, but it’s not. Slater’s insights and critique of American culture are as relevant today as when the book was published. Many of the tensions of the Nixon era, when this book was first published, have returned to the surface of American political discourse. But on a deeper level, the values underlying daily life in the US, and the stresses they cause, have not changed.
Slater says on page two:
The author examines America’s overvaluation of individualism at the expense of community as one major driver of our current social ills. We don’t know our neighbors, we don’t necessarily want to, and this comes at a cost.
Slater notes that the atomization of American culture puts immense pressure on parents–mothers in particular–to provide for all of the emotional needs of their children. In earlier societies where child-rearing was more of a community effort, the care provided by adults outside the family could ameliorate the worst effects of a mother’s stress and anxiety on her children. In American society, with its isolated nuclear families, children absorb intense doses of their parents’ neuroses. This, coupled with the emotional indulgence and permissiveness of Spockian child-rearing practices, produces a generation of self-centered narcissists perfectly suited to excel in the me-first, take-all-you-can-get world of American capitalism.
Capitalists in America produce and sell technology without fully considering or caring about the long-term effects of that technology. They never ask themselves, “Will this be good for society?” They ask only, “Can I make money from this?” The common good and the quality of American public life never factor into their thinking.
Slater’s critique of the perverse assumptions and distorted world view of US economists is quite compelling:
Slater notes that people work for many reasons: to improve the conditions of their home and surroundings, for personal growth and fulfillment, to be of service to others. American capitalism only counts work for money as real work, and money, the author notes, only motivates people to do work they wouldn’t otherwise want to do. That is, it motivates you to do things that don’t improve your conditions or surroundings, that don’t help you grow or find fulfillment, and that are not of service to others. There’s something inherently perverse about that.
This book is a good companion to Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. Both books focus on the dissolution of American community life and our culture’s drift toward individual loneliness and isolation. Putnam’s book focuses on data and statistics, appealing to social scientists with exhaustively researched numbers and facts. Slater’s book omits evidence to focus on analysis and insight. His language is less clinical, more eloquent and compelling, and will appeal to literary readers, philosophers and people who like to wrestle with big ideas.
The final section of the book focuses on how social and political institutions thwart change. The author notes in particular how structured economic inequality in the US preserves the status quo. The rich write loopholes into the tax law that they can then exploit to their advantage. Corporations buy politicians and craft legislation to preserve their privilege and advantage. The result is that the system keeps funneling money to the rich that they did not work for or earn. This welfare for the rich, as Slater calls it, is far more costly to our society than welfare for the poor. The poor, meanwhile, are too overworked and stressed out to enjoy the luxury of long-term planning. How can you consider life five and ten years down the road when you’re always struggling to make it through the month?
This book is as timely today as it was when it was published. While a reader might find some joy in discovering a writer whose insights are still fresh fifty years after publication, he might just well find himself depressed to see that so little has changed in all that time.
Though Slater’s The Pursuit of Loneliness was a bestseller when it was published back in 1970, I had never heard of it. Slater, a sociology professor, examines the new values and attitudes of the sixties counter-culture movement against the more established values and attitudes of earlier generations of Americans. That might make the book sound like a dated study of a bygone era, but it’s not. Slater’s insights and critique of American culture are as relevant today as when the book was published. Many of the tensions of the Nixon era, when this book was first published, have returned to the surface of American political discourse. But on a deeper level, the values underlying daily life in the US, and the stresses they cause, have not changed.
Slater says on page two:
One assumption underlying this book is that every morning all 200 million of us get out of bed and put a lot of energy into creating and re-creating the social calamities that oppress, infuriate and exhaust us.
The author examines America’s overvaluation of individualism at the expense of community as one major driver of our current social ills. We don’t know our neighbors, we don’t necessarily want to, and this comes at a cost.
Much of the unpleasantness, abrasiveness, and costliness of American life comes from the fact that we’re always dealing with strangers. This is what bureaucracy is: a mechanism for carrying on transactions between strangers. Who would need all those offices, all that paperwork, all those lawyers, contracts, rules and regulations if all economic transactions took place between lifelong neighbors? A huge and tedious machinery has evolved to cope with the fact that we prefer to carry on our activities among strangers. The preference is justified, as are most of the sicknesses in American society, by the alleged economic benefits of bigness, but like many economic arguments, it’s a con.
Slater notes that the atomization of American culture puts immense pressure on parents–mothers in particular–to provide for all of the emotional needs of their children. In earlier societies where child-rearing was more of a community effort, the care provided by adults outside the family could ameliorate the worst effects of a mother’s stress and anxiety on her children. In American society, with its isolated nuclear families, children absorb intense doses of their parents’ neuroses. This, coupled with the emotional indulgence and permissiveness of Spockian child-rearing practices, produces a generation of self-centered narcissists perfectly suited to excel in the me-first, take-all-you-can-get world of American capitalism.
Capitalists in America produce and sell technology without fully considering or caring about the long-term effects of that technology. They never ask themselves, “Will this be good for society?” They ask only, “Can I make money from this?” The common good and the quality of American public life never factor into their thinking.
Slater’s critique of the perverse assumptions and distorted world view of US economists is quite compelling:
Instead of starting with people and working from what people want, economists like to start with tasks: improving the condition of the corporations, or the market, or the interest rate, or the GNP [Gross National Product]. They talk of creating jobs, markets, demand. Economists assume that jobs must be created even for things that don’t need to be done so people can have money to spend on things they don’t need. And to get people to buy things they don’t need, we create a huge industry [advertising] to get them to want them. Meanwhile, the things people really need–food, shelter, safety, health, a pleasant environment–they can’t afford.
Money is supposed to be a tool–a means to some other end. But economists say things like, “What will be the effect of such-and-such a change on the Gross National Product, on employment, on the interest rate, on the stock market, on inventories, on new plant investment,” and so on. These are only measurements of means–what is the goal? What do we want to do with our work and our resources? Just make jobs? Just make money? A job does something. Money buys something. We keep forgetting what it is we want–what kind of environment, what kind of life. Do we work only to make more work, and get money only to accumulate more money?
The last thing we ever think about economically is what we need or want… In the long run no sound economy can be based on useless or destructive labor. The troubles we’re experiencing didn’t arise because someone made the wrong economic prediction, or used the wrong economic indicator or the wrong theory of corporate investment. They arose because we’ve been using our energies mindlessly for decades; we’ve put our labor and resources into activities that have brought us nothing back.
Slater notes that people work for many reasons: to improve the conditions of their home and surroundings, for personal growth and fulfillment, to be of service to others. American capitalism only counts work for money as real work, and money, the author notes, only motivates people to do work they wouldn’t otherwise want to do. That is, it motivates you to do things that don’t improve your conditions or surroundings, that don’t help you grow or find fulfillment, and that are not of service to others. There’s something inherently perverse about that.
This book is a good companion to Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. Both books focus on the dissolution of American community life and our culture’s drift toward individual loneliness and isolation. Putnam’s book focuses on data and statistics, appealing to social scientists with exhaustively researched numbers and facts. Slater’s book omits evidence to focus on analysis and insight. His language is less clinical, more eloquent and compelling, and will appeal to literary readers, philosophers and people who like to wrestle with big ideas.
The final section of the book focuses on how social and political institutions thwart change. The author notes in particular how structured economic inequality in the US preserves the status quo. The rich write loopholes into the tax law that they can then exploit to their advantage. Corporations buy politicians and craft legislation to preserve their privilege and advantage. The result is that the system keeps funneling money to the rich that they did not work for or earn. This welfare for the rich, as Slater calls it, is far more costly to our society than welfare for the poor. The poor, meanwhile, are too overworked and stressed out to enjoy the luxury of long-term planning. How can you consider life five and ten years down the road when you’re always struggling to make it through the month?
This book is as timely today as it was when it was published. While a reader might find some joy in discovering a writer whose insights are still fresh fifty years after publication, he might just well find himself depressed to see that so little has changed in all that time.
August 13, 2020
Social Theorist Par Excellance
Slater is the most perceptive social critic since Marcuse. Read also A Dream Deferred and The Chrysalis Effect to complete the anti-authoritarian trilogy.
Slater is the most perceptive social critic since Marcuse. Read also A Dream Deferred and The Chrysalis Effect to complete the anti-authoritarian trilogy.
August 24, 2008
brilliant
July 6, 2013
Greta book. Well thought out and a preemptive warning of the times at hand now.
August 30, 2022
A septuagenarian friend told me, when I said I was reading this, that "we all were reading that, back then." I can't say I heard of it before finding it listed in an additional reading section of an 80s-era radical US governance textbook.
Anyway, it's kind of dated, yet remains of interest to anyone curious about the Sixties counterculture's idealogical motivations writ large. Slater's exponents of his "new-culture" pretty well got sucked into his "old-culture," largely with the aggrandizement of self he warned about, though augmented with a perversion of the open emotional expression he favored, itself where Lasch was sniffing at 9 years later.
This comes off as a seminal New Left text where the new revolutionary subject is sought after—where the American-as-worker, coerced, yet empowered in his/her making this system Slater abhors go 'round, is a lost social cause and the Black person, being less "alienated from the body," is the "savior" of society. Huh.
Included policy recommendation: abolish child dependent tax deductions to curb “overpopulation.” Woof.
Anyway, it's kind of dated, yet remains of interest to anyone curious about the Sixties counterculture's idealogical motivations writ large. Slater's exponents of his "new-culture" pretty well got sucked into his "old-culture," largely with the aggrandizement of self he warned about, though augmented with a perversion of the open emotional expression he favored, itself where Lasch was sniffing at 9 years later.
This comes off as a seminal New Left text where the new revolutionary subject is sought after—where the American-as-worker, coerced, yet empowered in his/her making this system Slater abhors go 'round, is a lost social cause and the Black person, being less "alienated from the body," is the "savior" of society. Huh.
Included policy recommendation: abolish child dependent tax deductions to curb “overpopulation.” Woof.
March 11, 2025
มาอ่านตอนนี้ก็ยังรู้สึกร่วมสมัย เป็นหนึ่งในงานสังคมวิทยาที่อ่านง่ายอ่านสนุก สเลเตอร์พยายามตอบคำถามว่า ทำไมสังคมอเมริกันจึงเป็นอย่างที่มันเป็น เต็มไปด้วยความรุนแรง การแข่งขัน เสพติดเทคโนโลยี และหวาดกลัวการใช้ชีวิตแบบอื่นๆ โดยแปะป้ายทุกอย่างที่แตกต่างจากความเชื่อกระแสหลักว่า "คอมมิวนิสต์"
อ่านจบแล้วก็รู้สึกว่า วัฒนธรรมอเมริกันนี่มันอเมริกันจริงๆ 1970 เป็นยังไง ปัจจุบันก็อาจจะวนกลับมาเหมือนเดิม น่าเสียดายที่สังคมไทยเราไม่ค่อยตระหนักว่า ของจำนวนมากที่สังคมเราเชื่อและยึดถือ ก็เป็นคุณค่าแบบอเมริกันที่เรารับสืบทอดมาตั้งแต่ยุคสงครามเย็นมาจนถึงยุคอินเตอร์เน็ต สิ่งที่เรามองว่าเป็นสัจธรรมทางสังคมและเศรษฐกิจทั้งหลายในปัจจุบัน สืบสาวไปดีๆ ก็ไปลงเอยแถวๆ นี้แทบทั้งนั้นเลย
อ่านจบแล้วก็รู้สึกว่า วัฒนธรรมอเมริกันนี่มันอเมริกันจริงๆ 1970 เป็นยังไง ปัจจุบันก็อาจจะวนกลับมาเหมือนเดิม น่าเสียดายที่สังคมไทยเราไม่ค่อยตระหนักว่า ของจำนวนมากที่สังคมเราเชื่อและยึดถือ ก็เป็นคุณค่าแบบอเมริกันที่เรารับสืบทอดมาตั้งแต่ยุคสงครามเย็นมาจนถึงยุคอินเตอร์เน็ต สิ่งที่เรามองว่าเป็นสัจธรรมทางสังคมและเศรษฐกิจทั้งหลายในปัจจุบัน สืบสาวไปดีๆ ก็ไปลงเอยแถวๆ นี้แทบทั้งนั้นเลย
January 29, 2025
a prescient and unnerving book, it was written in the seventies, but rises above the hedonistic haze of many works of that time, casting a sharp eye on the current state and track of American souls. It takes real behavior and scientific insight and applies them not only to the soul (whatever that is), but to a better future. The book is as prescient today as it was incisive then, eerily so.
December 16, 2023
A phenomenal book, full of very insightful takes on american culture in the 70s and most of it is still relevant to this day. My only note is the author must have written this with a thesaurus on his desk so i’d recommend you do the same while reading.
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March 2, 2025This book is 55 years old. It was written during the last sixties. Times were different then but not so much now. This book made a lot of predictions which ring true now. For any lack of evidence, I take the initiative to do my own research. This is America.
July 3, 2019
Great, great, great book! Loved the socio-cultural implications explored in this book. Slater did an amazing job.
June 4, 2020
For anyone who has the sense that there should be "something more," this is a phenomenal book, amazingly relevant fifty years after its writing. A must read for anyone who thinks about existence.
May 27, 2021
It’s a product of its time (1970). I found the first two chapters edifying, but the rest of the book seemed a bit redundant and loquacious.
December 31, 2021
Such an important book - I will this keep this one by my bedside to revisit from time to time.
August 22, 2022
I’ve got so many thought about this particular read but I will say I am always interested in social critics assessing the problem with American culture post-1960 human rights wins & losses
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