the very wealthy would not be able to escape its effects, the gap between rich and poor nations would continue to widen, violent movements and terrorism against the West would increase, and the world's political climate would continue to deteriorate. The earth's finite resources simply could not support an indefinite expansion of industrial civilization.
However, Lasch found the left's program equally disastrous. Attempts to extend Western standards of living to the rest of the world would use up the earth's nonrenewable resources even more quickly. The resulting irreversible pollution of the atmosphere and destruction of the ecological system worldwide would threaten everything on which life on the planet depended. The earth could support such volumes of production for only a short time. The future of democracy was not safe, according to Lasch. The true danger to democracy would come from within as its psychological, cultural and spiritual foundations eroded (23-24).
Lasch introduced himself as he introduced the premise for The True and Only Heaven, briefly tracing his personal history for the reader. When he became a parent, a major shift in his awareness occurred. He described it as penetrating the illusion that America was a child-centered society, and being confronted with the indifference to everything that allowed children to flourish and grow up as responsible adults. As a parent, Lasch saw the unwholesomeness of the American way of life: the obsession with sex, violence and the pornography of making it; the addiction to drugs, entertainment, and the evening news; the impatience with the constraints of familial and marital ties; the preference for nonbinding commitments; the third-rate educational system; and other issues identified by Lasch as evidence of the third-rate morality of the country (31). Lasch translates much of his disillusionment about the decay of the family, sexual permissivenes...