Christopher Lasch
The Minimal Self (1984)
Total institutions—the death camps above all—have made us aware of the banality of evil, in Hannah Arendt's famous phrase; but they have also taught us something about the banality of survival. A growing belief that heroes don't survive informs the disenchantment with conventional codes of masculinity... It is not only masculinity that has lost its survival value, however, but the entire stock of allegedly outworn ideals of honor, heroic defiance of circumstances, and self-transcendence. As Vincent Canby noted in reviewing Lina Wertmüller's movie Seven Beauties, the survivor has discovered that "idealism is self-defeating."
(p. 73)
"A number of things give us hope," write Ehrlich and Harriman in the conclusion to [How to Be a Survivor]... "The first is that survival itself is the issue. Once people understand that, they will fight like hell for it." On the contrary, people committed only to survival are more likely to head for the hills. If survival is the overriding issue, people will take more interest in their personal safety than in the survival of humanity as a whole. Those who base the case for conservation and peace on survival not only appeal to a debased system of values, they defeat their own purpose.
(p. 78)
