A Revolution of the Spirit

How gratifying to have one's opinion verified by experts first thing in the morning, via the daily paper.

Lately what I've been saying to anyone who'll listen is that the whole premise of our economy is unsound. The GNP is based on all of us selling as many things to one another as we possibly can. Things we usually don't need, that there are already too many of, that the world does not have the resources for us to keep making. How sustainable is that? This system does need a shot in the arm, there's no doubt about it, but beyond that this system needs to fundamentally change its whole underlying idea, its structural vision.

So how pleasant it was to run into Benjamin R. Barber on the editorial page of The Oregonion today (Saturday, January 31. I'll add a link to it as soon as one of my kids tells me how to do so.)

Barber is a senior fellow at Demos, and the author of Jihad vs. Mac World and Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole.

Here's a quote from an essay in today's paper called "A new american revolution?" Rethinking the Soul of Capitalism:

Today we find ourselves in another seminal moment. Will be use it to rethink the meaning of capitalism and the relationship between our material bodies and the spirited psyches they are meant to serve? Between the commodity fetishism and single-minded commercialism that we have allowed to dominate us, and the pluralism, heterogeneity and spiritedness that constitute our professed national character?

I love this question.

What if we didn't spend all our time and money making things we don't need, and started concentrating our resources on making things that benefit us all and enriched our culture?

What if we produced less junk and more soul?

What if we spent our time building and staffing first-rate, engaging schools? What if preschoolers, the elderly, and those too mentally challenged to hold a job, were cared for by well-paid experts in quality facilities?

What is the basis of our society wasn't rampant, unbridled capitalism--the most ruthless economic system ever invented other than outright oppression--but became instead the pursuit of non-material happiness?

The struggle for the soul of capitalism is, then, a struggle between the nation's economic body and its civic soul: a struggle to put capitalism in its proper place, where it serves our nature and needs rather than manipulating and fabricating whims and wants. Saving capitalism means bringing it into harmony with spirit--with prudence, pluralism and those "things of the public" (res publica) that define our civic souls. A revolution of the spirit. Is the new president up to it? Are we?
--Benjamin R. Barber, Rethinking the Soul of Capitalism

What A Difference a Few Months Can Make!

Having been absent from the blogosphere since October due to family difficulties, what a welcome change to return to it only twelve days from the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States.

Unbelievable. Unprecedented. Indescribably delicious.

The USA is about to have a President who understands the concept of the human shadow, although he may not call it that. Who understands that name-calling, fact-twisting, blame-mongering or sending-to-hell will not solve any of our problems, and is, in fact, holding us back.

Who shows a graceful awareness of his country's shortcomings as well as his own, and shows the willingness and the ability to confront both.

Hallelujah.

While you wait for inauguration day, read both of his books, available now in paperback: Dreams from My Father, a clear-sighted and thoughtful memoir, and The Audacity of Hope, a succinct history of how the US got where she is today, and what can be done about it.

That creaking sound you hear, right there at the edge of your hearing, is the sound of the wheel finally starting to turn...