Surely the romantic and now permanent revolution against the ancient regime of reason is against a regime largely invented by the revolutionaries the… - Philip Rieff

In one certain way, the therapeutically inclined individual resembles his predecessor, the ascetic. That resemblance can be best sketched historically. Once launched into some activity, conceiving of himself as an instrument of God’s will, the ascetic did not stop to ask about the meaning of it all. On the contrary, the more furious his activity, the more the problem of what his activity meant receded from his mind. … To meet the demands of the day was as near as one could come to doing the pious thing, in this—God’s—world. To trouble about meaning was really an impiety and, of course, frivolous, because futile. For the question of meaning, therefore, neither the ascetic nor the therapeutic type feels responsible, if his spiritual discipline has been successful. The recently fashionable religious talk of “ultimate concern” makes no sense either in the ascetic or in the therapeutic mode. To try to relate “ultimate concern” to everyday behavior would be exhausting and nerve-shattering work; indeed, it could effectively inhibit less grandiose kinds of work. Neither the ascetic nor the therapeutic bothers his head about “ultimate concern.” Such a concern is for mystics who cannot otherwise enjoy their leisure. In the workaday world, there are no ultimate concerns, only present ones. Therapy is the respite of every day, during which the importance of the present is learned, and the existence of what in the ascetic tradition came to be called the “ultimate” or “divine” is unlearned.

[The United States and the post-Stalinist Soviet Union,] [b]oth issue from the assumption that wealth is a superior and adequate substitute for symbolic impoverishment. Both American and Soviet cultures are essentially variants of the same belief in wealth as the functional equivalent of a high civilization. In both cultures, the controlling symbolism has been stripped down to a belief in the efficacy of wealth. Quantity has become quality. The answer to all questions of “what for?” is “more.” ... Out of this redefinition, Western culture is changing already into a symbol system unprecedented in its plasticity and absorptive capacity. Nothing much can oppose it really, and it welcomes all criticism, for, in a sense, it stands for nothing.

Symbolic impoverishment ceases to be a problem precisely because the rich have found functional equivalents for a system of compelling moral demands, in analysis and art, which may be said to be a mode of self-reverence. the alternative to questionable renewals of religion, taking the form of excessive moral demands, by which this culture has been regularly carried away in the past. Educated as they are, the rich have no need of religious renewals. In classical cultures, an ascended class had to justify itself before those below in the social structure. But the culture revolution of our time has eliminated this need for class - as well as self-justification. Nevertheless, those below still seek to emulate the ascendant social class, without being convinced of its superiority. And just as the rich have lost their idea of superiority, so have the poor lost their idea of religion. Poverty is no longer holy; the poor, insofar as. they are educated in the new doctrine, have no motive for projecting onto society a new set of strict moral demands that might infuse society with the kind of impetus needed to end symbolic poverty.