I've only read Revolt and Culture of Narcissm but feel an urge to get a deeper understanding of his insights. Looking at the long game here as I don't always have a ton of time to read. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I haven't quite gotten to heart of his beef with the "masses"...He dislikes that they want to rule without the capacity to rule, but I've yet to pinpoint the real-world outcome of that incapacity in Revolt. — ZzzoneiroCosm

...as we have noted: the rebellion of the masses is one and the same thing as the fabulous increase that human existence has experienced in our times. But the reverse side of the same phenomena is fearsome; it is none other than the radical demoralization of humanity. — Ortega - Revolt, p 125 (bolds mine)

It comes to the same thing then to say: At a given period, such a man, such a people, or such a homogeneous group of peoples, are in command, as to say: At this given period there predominates in the world such a system of opinions - ideas, preferences, aspirations, purposes. — Ortega - Revolt, p 128

Now, the mass-peoples have decided to consider as bankrupt that system of standards which European civilisation implies, but as they are incapable of creating others, they do not know what to do, and to pass the time they kick up their heels and stand on their heads. — Ortega - Revolt, p 134

The world at the present day is behaving in a way which is a very model of childishness...the master has left the class, the mob of youngsters breaks loose, kicks up its heels, and goes wild...[as it has] no task with a meaning, a continuity, a purpose, it follows that it can only do one thing - stand on its head. — Ortega - Revolt, p 133

Europe has been left without a moral code...there is precisely the aspiration to live without conforming to any moral code...The accusation would leave him cold, or rather, would flatter him. Immoralism has become a commonplace, and anybody and everbody boasts of practicing it. — Ortega - Revolt, p. 187

The talented retain many of the vices of the aristocracy without its virtues. Their snobbery lacks any acknowledgement of reciprocal obligations between the favored few and the multitude. — Lasch - Revolt, p. (not sure)

Getting the distinct feeling that Ortega's book has been abused vulgarly — ZzzoneiroCosm

Ortega is just defending the elites. — javi2541997

Ortega is just defending the elites. — javi2541997

This is the context in which I typically hear the book invoked. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Wage labor [proslavery apologists argued] was far more cruel than slavery since employers acknowledged no responsibility to feed and clothe hired laborers, whereas slaveowners could not escape their paternal obligations (if only because they needed to maintain the value of their investment in human property). — Lasch - Revolt, p. 66

By the end of the nineteenth century the "dignity of labor" had become an empty phrase, uttered without conviction on ritual occasions. The "laboring classes" no longer referred to the vast majority of self-reliant, self-respecting citizens; the term now referred to a permanent class of hirelings, escape from which appeared to be the only compelling definition of opportunity. — Lasch - Revolt, p. 72

The old dispute between left and right has exhausted its capacity to clarify issues and to provide a reliable map of reality. In some quarters the very idea of reality has come into question, perhaps because the talking classes inhabit an artificial world in which simulations of reality replace the thing itself. — Lasch - Revolt, p. 80

In fact, it is no longer really the real...it is hyperreal...By crossing into a space whose curvature is no longer that of the real, nor that of truth, the era of simulation is inaugurated by a liquidation of all referentials...It is no longer a question of imitation or duplication, nor even parady. It is a question of substituting signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every real process via its operational double...Never again will the real have a chance to produce itself...pretending or dissimulating leaves the principle of reality intact, it is simply masked, whereas simulation threatens the difference between the "true" and the "false," the "real" and the "imaginary." — Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (1981), p. 2-3

The idea that democracy is incompatible with excellence, that high standards are inherently elitist (or, as we would say today, sexist, racist, and so on) has always been the best argument against it...The lastest variation on this familiar theme, its reductio ad absurdum, is that a respect for cultural diversity forbids us to impose the standards of privileged groups on the victims of oppression. — Lasch - Revolt, p. 84-5