Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Quotable: Reformation Economics

Martin Luther, renowned father of Protestantism, in An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520), quoted in George W. Forell, Faith Active in Love (1954):
"We must put a bit in the mouth of the Fuggers* and similar corporations. How is it possible that in the lifetime of a single man** such great possessions, worthy of a king, can be piled up, and yet everything be done legally and according to God's will? I am not a mathematician, but I do not understand how a man with a hundred gulden can make a profit of twenty gulden in one year, nay, how with one gulden he can make another; and that, too, by another way than agriculture or cattle-raising, in which increase of wealth depends not on human wits, but on God's blessing."

"This I know well, that it would be much more pleasing to God if we increased agriculture and diminished commerce."

Who knew Luther was an Agrarian? I like him better the more I learn. Too bad this stuff doesn't make it into Sunday School curriculum more often. The American church*** couldn't possibly be more interested in civic indoctrination than in historical veracity, could it?

And who knew that corrupt popes and medieval mob families spawned capitalism centuries before Adam Smith came along? Funny how that never came up in high school Social Studies, college History, or graduate school Economics classes. So much for modern Western society having objective, accurate, and rational explanations for the causes and origins of everything. Mythology is not dead after all.

*16th century Italian banking establishment employed by the Vatican to facilitate the sale of indulgences. During this era, the papacy "sometimes used the threat of excommunication to compel men to pay the usurious interests demanded by Italian moneylenders." - Forell
**Please excuse Luther's gender-exclusive language.
***Double entendre intended.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Always look on the bright si-ide of life . . .

"When you're chewing on life's gristle
Don't grumble, give a whistle
And this'll help things turn out for the best..." *

The good news** is that if/when the Economy stops, that'll do more to slow down global warming than any policy measures undertaken thus far. So the sooner this thing tanks, the more habitable the planet will be in the long run.

I desperately wish I were making things up, but I'm pretty sure 'unsustainable' means 'can't keep going' means 'is going to stop,' and I can't help being a little surprised at how surprised most of the experts seem to be that the economy is imploding. Even the esteemed robber-baron/philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in his 1889 essay The Gospel of Wealth admitted that if capitalism ever slowed down it would fall apart, though in his colossal hubris he insisted that such a thing would never happen because in 'Progress!' through aquisition of wealth lay the destiny and salvation of the human race, and failure was unthinkable. Ever since Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776), the classic apologetic for growth-based economics, capitalist fundamentalists have steadfastly held to the dogma that The Economy is Making Life Better for Everybody and Will Make Life Better-er FOR-EV-ER, despite centuries of evidence to the contrary.

"The Economy Works, d'you hear? It does not cause Problems. If it isn't working for you you're the Problem and you don't really count. If fact you deserve to be poor and you should be thankful that we deign to use your labor at all. Living wage? Hah! Do you want our shareholders to complain? What would become of our profit margins? And if you could afford Land, or, heaven forbid, acquire Capital, you wouldn't be Labor anymore and that would never do. So we have to keep you convinced that The Economy is your unqualified benefactor and you would not survive without it. Because really it (and we its Masters) could not survive without you."

Welcome to the Matrix. This is the greatest commandment: Feed all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength to the Marketplace. It will give you in return an excess of food and trinkets, plenty of cheap entertainment and sensual pleasures, and a cleverly fabricated, comfortable illusion from which you (if you know what’s good for you) will never wake up. The second is like it: Serve yourself, use your neighbor, and once your own appetites are glutted, buy your way into Heaven with your ill-gotten wealth and garner as much self-congratulatory recognition for your ‘generosity’ as possible.

Everybody now!
"It's the end of the world as we know it
it's the end of the world as we know it
it's the end of the world as we know it
and I feel fine . . ."*
*Thanks to Monty Python and REM, respectively, for their lyrical gallows humor.
**The other, and more important, Good News is that the world is already saved.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Poetry: Re-Membering

by Wendell Berry in the introduction to his novel Remembering

". . . to him that is joined to all the living there is hope . . ." -
Ecc. 9:4

"Let the fragments of love be reassembled in you.
Only then will you have true courage." -
Hayden Carruth

Heavenly Muse, Spirit who brooded on
The world and raised it shapely out of nothing,
Touch my lips with fire and burn away
All dross of speech, so that I keep in mind
The truth and end to which my words now move
In hope. Keep my mind within that Mind
Of which it is a part, whose wholeness is
The hope of sense in what I tell. And though
I go among the scatterings of that sense,
The members of its worldly body broken,
Rule my sight by vision of the parts
Rejoined. And in my exile's journey far
From home, be with me, so I may return.
I'm not allowed to start reading the story until my thesis is done--11 days!--but something moved me to open the cover this morning and the impulse proved fruitful. Quite the fitting invocation and benediction for the work of writing a theology paper and a great deal else in this season of my life.

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Earth to Icarus

Originally printed April 2006 in "The Humble Deacon", a North Park Theological Seminary student publication.

theme - 'sankofa: looking back to move forward'

- - - -

A tragic figure in Greek mythology, Icarus escapes prison on cleverly invented wings of feather and wax, only to plummet to his demise after failing to heed his father’s warning about flying too near the heat of the sun. This is the story of Western civilization and its relationship to its environment.

The dream of colonialism was ever-expanding boundaries and fresh sources of cheap (exploited) labor and resources. The dream of capitalism was that the greater good of society would be served by individuals working in self-interest and that unregulated competition by private enterprise would result in ever-increasing material prosperity for all people. Francis Bacon, a key figure of the scientific revolution, declared that “knowledge is power.” He viewed technology and mastery of natural science through God-given intellect and creativity as the means to transcending the difficulties and suffering of humanity exiled from Eden.

Whether or not we are aware of them, these three philosophies shape most aspects of our daily lives. We are the conqueror, merchant, and inventor chasing the Utopian rainbow, often careless of what we step on and who we break in the process. We prefer to live with our heads in the clouds. This is our inheritance.

We’ve had our time in the sun, a century or two of flight from the natural limitations of human creaturehood. We must return to earth, and we will do so violently if we do not choose to do so carefully and soon. There is no easy way out of our present predicament. We all depend on and participate in an economy that is on a trajectory toward self-destruction. We are all implicated to some degree in the problem, and none of us can ethically exempt ourselves from responsibility to our neighbors and to our descendants.

Movement toward a sustainable future will require drastic paradigm shift and commitment to wise, disciplined, and well-informed choices. We must learn from our mistakes and change our ways. We must humble ourselves before our Maker whose good creation we have desecrated and whose provision we have taken for granted, commodified, and squandered.

Who will bring about the necessary changes? We can no longer abdicate responsibility for the consequences of our lives to our elected officials. Though warned by President Carter’s administration about pressing concerns relating to fossil fuel consumption and the environment, our nation’s lawmakers have for the last several decades consistently chosen short-range expediency and popularity over wisdom in these matters, even repealing conservation laws that were put in place mid-20th century. Advocating responsible policies might help to move our culture in the right direction, but hierarchy and concentrated power will never build a sustainable world because it is contrary to the very nature of these institutional forces.

Sustainability means meeting the needs (not wants) of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This can only grow from the ground up, one attitude and community at a time. The following are examples of paradigm and priority changes that will move our lives in the right direction:

competition => cooperation
ignorance => awareness
apathy => compassion
isolation => community
disposable => durable
quantity => quality
convenient => worthwhile
linear => cyclical
consuming => sharing
profit => value
exploitation =>servanthood
waste => conservation
fragmentation => integrity
entitlement => gratitude
more => enough

Ecology is the relationship of living things to their living and non-living environment, and the study of these connections. Context determines the meaning and consequences of our actions. We do not live in a vacuum, and whether or not we understand or acknowledge our place in the system, our decisions have complex ramifications for many (and maybe all) other lives. As Wendell Berry writes, “The context of everything is everything else.”* Improving our personal ecology requires the attentiveness and humility to see the systemic relationships for what they really are, and the courage to change our behaviors for the sake of our fellow creatures (human and otherwise) even when it means inconvenience, discomfort, or sacrifice.

The myth of eternal affluence is a fairy tale we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night. The age of cheap energy and unlimited resource extraction is over. Time to wake up. Our short-sighted consumptive practices already have serious negative consequences for our less prosperous neighbors all around the world, and they are beginning to catch up with us. Several generations have chosen to ignore the warning signs. We are no longer free to pretend that the material economy can keep up its ascent indefinitely. It is time to pledge allegiance. Do we follow Christopher Columbus, Adam Smith, and Francis Bacon, or do we follow the risen Christ? Will we choose responsibly to walk and steward the earth as God intended, or will we persist in our illusions until we fall?

* Berry, Wendell. “The Purpose of a Coherent Community.” The Way of Ignorance. Washington, D.C.: Shoemaker and Hoard, 2005.

Cartoon: Playing War