Discuss: Breaking the Spell of Money

Thanks for the article.  To stay close to the earth and keeping my spending down, I have worked a 12 step program called Debtors Anonymous.  I suggest it as a low tech way to stay grounded and “live extravagantly within our means”.  Wichozani wo wookiya “may we walk in the center of our lives in abundance with the Creation”  D/Lakota
http://www.debtorsanonymous.org
Doing my little peace to break the spell :-)

No we shouldn’t be going all Paul Krugmany/neo-Keynesian and stimulating this economy back to life—by zapping consumer spending with the electric paddlers of government spending. Instead we should be appreciating that greed and lust for power have done what we greenies never could—crashed the global system.

All the pleading and hang-wringing about global warming and species loss have fallen mostly on deaf ears, as China and India’s billions race ahead to modern, US-style prosperity, complete with car culture, industrial agriculture and fossil fuel addiction.

The billionaire bankers and hedge fund managers who broke the WTO don’t warrant our praise, but we shouldn’t squander the respite they’ve unintentionally bequeathed us.

Time to re-read Bill McKibben’s “Deep Economy,” David Korten’s “Agenda for a New Economy,” Paul Gilding’s “The Great Disruption” (which posits the end of shopping!)and other works exploring where we might go from here to build a sustainable and convivial alternative to consumer-driven ecocide. And then to act.

I was following right along until I saw that the list of names left off George Soros. After that omisson, the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth.

Bad form, Orion.

I have read and admired Scott Sanders’ work for almost four decade, and this piece is astounding. Perhaps the clearest, most Thoreauvian, most far-reaching piece of American writing since King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” I will share this piece with others and teach it in my classes.

Let me reccomend ‘The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics’ by Riane Eisler. One of her several books on how to move beyond dominator politics and culture.

It’s good to see that my essay has spoken to concerns shared by others, and that in the eyes of most respondents it has done so persuasively.  Let me briefly comment on a few entries. 

In number 4, “flaneuse” objects that I don’t acknowledge the role played by individual consumption in degrading the planet. Actually, I do; in fact I devote the last third of the essay to calling for us—each and every one of us—to reject the ideology of “consumerism.”  That being said, we need to recognize how that ideology is articulated, broadcast, and sold, not only in our nation but around the world.  The choices individuals make are constrained not only by multi-billion dollar advertising and propaganda from“think tanks” but also by public policies and corporate decisions.  Our government has subsidized automobile travel while underfunding public transportation; it has supported coal-fired power plants while neglecting renewable energy; it has subsidized industrial agriculture at the expense of organic and local agriculture.  Corporations have decided to blow the tops off mountains and dump the rubble in rivers; they have secretly increased the addictive power of cigarettes; they have sold toxic financial instruments while hiding the risks.  I write an essay that reflects my views; Rupert Murdoch dictates the politics of Fox Broadcasting, the Wall Street Journal, the London Times, 20th Century Fox, and hundreds of other radio, television, and print media.  Which of us bears the greater responsibility for influencing public behavior and the fate of the planet? 

Paul Puckett (#6) asks where I got the 41% figure for the financial sector’s share of corporate earnings.  The answer is, from a column by Frank Rich, “Fight On, Goldman Sachs,” New York Times, 24 April 2010.  Here’s the relevant sentence from his article:  “That ‘financial alchemy,’ as Zuckerman calls it, explains why the finance sector’s share of domestic corporate profits, never higher than 16 percent until 1986, hit 41 percent in the last decade.”  Rich cites as his source “The Quiet Coup” (The Atlantic, May 2009), by Simon Johnson, former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund. 

I assure Clare Keller (#7) that I am aware it’s expensive to provide for a family and run a household.  I don’t suggest in the essay that money is unnecessary; I say that, “Beyond meeting our basic needs, money cannot give us any of the things that actually bring happiness—family, community, good health, good work, experience of art and nature, service to others, a sense of purpose, spiritual insight.”  We need to ask: What are our basic needs?  And why is it so expensive to meet those needs—for health care, say, or insurance, or college tuition?  Remember that the “earnings” of the superrich factor into virtually everything we buy.  Remember that the U.S. accounts for nearly half of all military expenditures on the planet, and those bloated costs swell our taxes. 

I share Susan Meeker-Lowry’s (#13) regret that the argument in her 1995 book, Economics as if Earth Mattered, has had minimal impact by comparison with the impact of round-the-clock commercial messages.  She follows in the tradition of E. F. Schumacher, Kenneth Boulding, Herman Daly, and other economists who have vigorously argued that the human economy is subordinate to and wholly dependent upon nature’s economy.  Most economists, however, including those advising the White House and the majority of those in universities, have ignored this fundamental fact.  Nature doesn’t pay salaries or make campaign contributions.

I share most of the reservations that Brett Busang (#9) voices about the Obama administration’s military and economic policies.  I welcome Tom Callos’ (#14) reminder that we need to defend our minds as well as our bodies.  I’m intrigued by the Debtors Anonymous program cited by Tom Weaver (#17).  I second the reading suggestions made by Dale Sturdavant (#18).  I agree with McKenzie’s (#19) comment that my essay should have named George Soros as one of the world’s grotesquely overcompensated superrich manipulators of money.  And I thank Ned Stuckey-French for his kind, if far too generous, comparison between my essay and that passionate, eloquent, riveting call to conscience by Dr. King.

As always Scott Russell Sanders dips his quill in some very soulful ink.  When he writes:

“As a nation, we need to quit using the flow of money as the chief measure of our well-being.”

I’m with you Sanders.  How to change culture and political priorities? How do we make this value shift?

The only way I know is for the Earth itself to entice individuals to love the natural world. Everyone needs time to silence the voices of consumerism. Everyone needs some wilderness time. 

Nature’s influence can draw people away from the electronic voices of consumerism that fill us with addictive urges to own more things that always fail to deliver a rich life. 

People are part of that natural world. Although Sanders isn’t using the “L” word, I think this is the core of his message.  Unless we spread the value of loving each other and loving our Earth, we pave the path to a harsh and hateful story for humanity.

We can write a better future. I have to believe that this is true.

Let us all email this essay to the White House.