A Christian Critique Of Capitalism

Most critiques of capitalism are made from the vantage point of socialism, which argues that while capitalism can create wealth, it fails to distribute it fairly.  Then there is environmental critique which points out that capitalism inevitably destroys the environment because it has no value but profit and sacrifices everything to that end.

But in recent years we have heard much about the “Gospel of Wealth, often promulgated in some Evangelical Churches. The argument is that since God loves us he wants us to be happy and being rich would make us happy so God wants us to accumulate wealth.  This is a vindication of capitalism. This seems like a fairly logical proposition.  Unfortunately it contradicts the real gospel where Jesus tells the rich man it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle that for a rich man to get into heaven.  What follows is a blistering critique from a Christian point of view, authored by the most famous monk of modern times, Thomas Merton.

“And nowhere, except perhaps in the analogous society of pagan Rome, has there ever been such a flowering of cheap and petty and disgusting lusts and vanities as in the world of capitalism, where there is no evil that is not fostered and encouraged for the sake of making money.  We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.” The Seven Story Mountain

Merton’s believed that God had a fundamental design for each of us and that our problem is that we don’t recognize it; we live as a false, ego driven self.  As a result: “Our materialist, consumer society tries to make us believe we are truly alive when we have lots of ways to satisfy, however temporarily, our physical appetites.” Of the person who lives like that, Merton wrote in New Seeds Of Contemplation: “His mind and his will are not fully his own.  They are under the power of his appetites [and] under the control of those who gratify his appetites.  Just because he can buy one brand of whiskey rather than another, this man deludes himself that he is making a choice; but the fact is that he is a devout servant of a tyrannical ritual.  He must reverently buy the bottle, take it home, unwrap it, pour it out for his friends, watch TV, ‘feel good,’ talk his silly uninhibited head off, get angry, shout, fight and go to bed in disgust with himself and the world.  This becomes a kind of religious compulsion without which he cannot convince himself that he is really alive, really ‘fulfilling his personality.’  He is not ‘sinning’ but simply makes an ass of himself, deluding himself that he is real when his compulsions have reduced him to a shadow of a genuine person.”

So ends the reading.

Trusting Earth, Trusting Each Other

The Buddhists have a saying that goes:  “I entrust myself to Earth, Earth entrusts herself to me.” Conservationists of the old school used to say we humans must conserve the Earth, which is completely true but only one half of the truth.  We are conserved as well.  Just think the Earth away and where would we humans live?  In other words the relationship is reciprocal, we each depend on one another.  This is especially true since our kind have developed so much power to alter the Earth, both physically and chemically, in ways that degrade Earth’s ability to support abundant life.  Could we so ignore this Buddhist wisdom that we so damage the Earth that it can no longer support us?  Possibly.  But even falling far short of extincting ourselves, we can and are extincting other species and their habitats so that we are on a path toward creating a miserable planet on which to live, with polluted air and water, a degraded climate, severe water shortages, super fires and superstorms, exhausted and infertile soils, and on and on.  You all know the litany.  And one awful outcome of this degradation is that it is already creating large numbers of refugees, and will continue so that before long millions will be on the move.  All of this will increase the likelihood of violent conflict.  And that is where we also see reciprocal relationships.  As partner A looks at partner B and sees anger, hostility, and a threatening posture, fear pushes partner A to adopt the same posture.  Trust goes away.  Mirror images prove to each the validity of their assessment of the other and, whoops, we are in an endless cycle of permawar.  This mirror imaging is true not only of nation states, but of individuals as well.  We mistakenly think we are independent, self-made, not needing others, go-it-aloners, etc.  In fact, in reality so obvious that I don’t know how anyone misses it, we are dependent on thousands of others, most of whom we will never know.  For example, we are dependent on those long ago people who invented the grains in your breakfast cereal, the mother who taught you to tie your shoes, the people who made your car, and your underwear, and so forth without end.  If we fight each other, whether as nation states or individuals, we will lose our chance to save the Earth and each other.  Peace is the only way to sustainability, even survivability.  “I entrust myself to Earth, Earth entrusts herself to me.”  It’s reciprocal.