In the 1980’s (note the period) I attended an ecumenical gathering in Brazil on the theme `Democracy in Crisis and the New World Order: A Challenge to the Latin American and Caribbean Churches’. Capitalism and its high priests were running rampant creating penury for a whole region. What was known as Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP – true to the word) was the mantra of the financial institutions to “soften” a heartless system through which impoverished human beings and whole nations were seen as necessary collateral damages. Nothing much has changed with the state of Greece and the Spanish economies.

At that gathering voices from the grassroots (victims) and those in power were brought together at an open hearing and at the heart of the findings was the greed and inhumanity of the financial institutions, noted especially in the re-payment of massive external debts which resulted in the `mortgaging of the future‘, as country after country were handed over to the IMF, the World Bank and the International Development Bank. And if you are wondering, payment meant adjustment policies, reduction of wages, changes in labour laws, mass lay-offs, fewer investments in social programs, export oriented production, more flexible investment laws, price de-regulation and the selling off of state assets. All the so-called socialist governments were either destabilised or overthrown, and not the least by successive US governments’ fear of communism!

Have we learnt anything? Nothing actually and now that the demon has come home to haunt us the only response is more jobs and growth. We refuse to scrutinise the “economics” that actually shape our life together. We continue to insist on our worship of the idol of economic growth at all costs, the cult of `always more’, which must be pursued with absolute and ruthless devotion. The illogic of capital and market continues to battle with the logic of life. While the former emphasizes, competitiveness (survival of the fittest), money over human beings, and, as one of the new idols of the age, demands human blood and lives, the other, inspired by gospel values, places the human person and the whole of creation as the supreme value.

I recall Eric Fromm’s, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, in which he takes up the phrase of the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno and suggests that “necrophilia” is characteristic of modern human beings. So, “The world becomes a sum of lifeless artefacts; from synthetic food to synthetic organs, the whole [hu]man becomes part of the total machinery that (s)he controls and is simultaneously controlled by. (S/)He has no goal, no plan for life, except doing what the logic of technique determines him(her) to do…The world of life has become a world of no life; persons have become nonpersons.. a world of death and decay”.

And whose fault it is that we are here? I think Shakespeare in Julius Caesar offers the answer: “the fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” Indeed! And it is not as if there are not alternative voices. All the way back into the 70’s (and before that) there were voices calling for different ways of organising our economic life together. There was the Dutch economist Bob Goudzwaard who employed two metaphors to point us to some concrete ways of change. He suggested that our present predicament is like that of a busy tunnel where vehicles have to move at the highest speed to ensure a continuous flow of traffic. Slow cars and trucks are excluded and the traffic flow is in one direction. Likewise in our societies (in market and planned economy) the basic orientation is to a flow. The goal is not the preservation of stocks, but the maximum flow of production and consumption at all costs -including people.

However, our societies need not follow the “rat race of tunnel life”. It can also function like a tree suggests Goudzwaard. A living tree does not grow endlessly. It reaches maturity when it has grown to a certain height, for its ultimate purpose is not to grow but to bear fruit. It will not overuse the soil on which it stands, and it can include all its cells in a living participation. Similarly, a society can give priority to the needs of the marginalised, to the preservation of the environment or to the meaningful employment of all if and only if it is willing to abstain from the desire to reach maximum production & consumption. This would mean the radical restructuring of society which does not eliminate markets but it does deprive them of their significance as the ultimate criterion. Then we can start experiencing a new heaven and a new earth!

jagessar© may 19, 2012

Money may be “funny” for some people. For others, they just want to strike it rich. Just check out the percentage of people who will play the lottery with the hope of making money or more money! Or all those talent finding, celebrity hyped up and gaming TV shows. We all wish we had more money than we presently have: for more money means freedom or independence or self worth; it will open the world, remove anxieties and will make us happier. So we are led to believe. It may not be wise to ask the rich whether this is true – as becoming rich is no guarantee that the desire for more ends there. Personal happiness has become big business in spite of wealth. Which is the world’s happiest country, do you think? And who are the happiest and most contented people in the world?

The borderland between faith and money has not been a comfortable place to live: mammon still competes with the Divine for the loyalty of even the most devout. The message from religious institutions, that “the love of money” distracts the faithful from what is most important, while administering millions of pounds can sound hypocritical.  Talk about money is easily “dumbed down”, except “give us some of yours.”  Many will agree that our society is heavily materialistic, valuing products more than people and that “greed is still a distortion of the ways of God”. Yet, only a few of us seem able to decide when enough is enough. Greed may be a distortion, but how often do we see that it is wrong to want more money than we need. It is business as usual even after JP Morgan’s recent disclosure.

The prevailing culture wants us to believe that money is value free. Even if money is a neutral medium of exchange it does become something morally positive or negative, and something spiritually liberating or destructive because of the ways we use and misuse it. We need to make the connections between our faith, moral choices and the implications for our economic life – the whole of life. Then faith ought to make a difference to the ways in which we conduct our financial affairs. For, the bottom line is: where our treasure is, there will our heart be also.”

jagessar© May 12, 2012