Christopher Lasch

“[Today,] people find it difficult to acknowledge the justice and goodness of…[a] higher power when the world is so obviously full of evil. They find it difficult to reconcile their expectations of worldly success and happiness, so often undone by events, with the idea of a just, loving, and all-powerful creator. Unable to conceive of a God who does not regard human happiness as the be-all and end-all of creation, they cannot accept the central paradox of religious faith: that the secret of happiness lies in renouncing the right to be happy.” — Christopher Lasch, “The Soul of Man Under Secularism”

“What democracy requires is rigorous debate, not information. Of course, it needs information too, but the kind of information it needs can be generated by debate. We do not know what we need to know until we ask the right questions, and we can identify the right questions only by subjecting our own ideas about the world to the test of public controversy. information, usually seen as the preconditions of debate, is better understood as its byproduct. When we get into arguments that focus and fully engage our attention, we become avid seekers of relevant information. Otherwise we take in information passively — if we take it in at all.” — Christopher Lasch, “The Lost Art of Argument”