Love Quote by Christopher Lasch

Relentless improvement is the sunny slogan; Lasch’s point is the shadow it casts. In a single line he compresses a whole political economy of desire: mass merchandising doesn’t just respond to needs, it manufactures restlessness. The product is never finished because the consumer is never allowed to be finished either. “Upgrading of consumer tastes” sounds like refinement, even progress, but Lasch chooses the word “upgrading” to hint at software logic before software became a metaphor for life: people are treated as systems to be patched, nudged, and versioned.

The intent is diagnostic, not celebratory. Lasch is writing against the idea that consumer capitalism is merely efficient distribution. He’s tracking how markets colonize culture by turning taste into a moving target, a status ladder disguised as personal preference. The subtext is moral and psychological: when the economy depends on perpetual dissatisfaction, contentment becomes a kind of civic threat. The shopper must remain slightly embarrassed by last year’s model, last season’s look, yesterday’s palate.

Context matters: Lasch, a historian of the late-20th-century American psyche, was preoccupied with how institutions weaken character and community by outsourcing meaning to consumption. Read through his broader critique, “mass merchandising” isn’t just retail technique; it’s social engineering. Improvement is framed as virtue, but it’s also a discipline: keep wanting, keep replacing, keep performing “better taste” to prove you’re keeping up. The line works because it’s clinical, almost bloodless, letting the chill of its implications do the persuading.