Half Past Noon

“It’s unfortunate that what people believe to be the most important things about themselves, their innermost truths and secrets – the real you or me – that we dish up when somebody looks sympathetic, is very likely to be the driveling nonsense that we generally have enough brains to forget about. The real you or me that we conceal because we think people won’t accept it is slop – and why should anybody want it?”

Who does this sound like?:

“Our country is filled with a socialistic, I.W.W., communistic, radical, lawless, anti-American, anti-church, anti-God, anti-marriage gang, and they are laying the eggs of rebellion and unrest in labor and capital and home; and we have some of them in the universities. I can take you through the universities and pick out a lot of black-hearted, communistic fellows who are teaching that to the boys and sending them out to undermine America. If this radical element could have their way, my friends, the laws of nature would be repealed, or they would reverse them; oil and water would mix; the turtledove would marry the turkey buzzard; the sun would rise in the west and set in the east; chickens would give milk and cows would lay eggs; the pigs would crow and roosters would squeal; cats would bark and dogs would mew; the least would be the greatest; a part would be greater than the whole; yesterday would be day after tomorrow, if that crowd were in control.”

How anybody can deny the excellence of this idea is beyond me.

Nothing terribly new, but Patrick Deneen has some good stuff on the decline of small businesses: Finger on the Scale. The piece seems to imply (rightfully, I think) that we can’t ever escape the formative effect that the imagination and goals of society have on economic exchange. The real issue is how we can re-center that influence toward its proper aim. Not to turn all Aristotelian or anything…

This is an open question; no need to agree with Deneen one-hundred percent. But I think we’ve got to wrestle with this.

…perhaps it would not be too difficult to begin looking at systematic ways in which current policy supports concentrated economic power, and to begin its dismantling. It may also be that Government needs to be more active in enforcing anti-trust measures. The Republican orthodoxy will scream that such activity is an intrusion of “Gummint,” but it’s clear that Gummint has already intruded in this area, and is doing tremendous damage to the fabric of the nation (the Republican orthodoxy’s ecstasy in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision that ensures unlimited corporate participation in our electoral process does not inspire confidence about their motives). Perhaps some log-rolling is in order: in exchange for a serious consideration about the disproportionate impact of regulation on differently scaled businesses, a sustained look at anti-trust enforcement could be considered…. We will differ even here on how much of a role the Gummint should have in tipping the scales, but it’s quite clear that the scales have already been considerably tipped, and that American towns, citizenship, and virtue have all suffered as a result – and that finally cheap prices are too high a price to pay.

It occurs to me that we could use a set of theses on localism. Food, economic justice, what have you. My conversations have been bogged down by not clarifying my presuppositions. So I’m going to try to write something up.

An Augustinian is going to recognize that living in this world is a dirty business. An Augustinian is also going to invite the world to be better.

If we agree on that, how should we apply it?

Lots of spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen Lost, what are you waiting for? There are only 75 hours of TV to catch up on.

I haven’t read what I’m sure are hundreds of theories on the Lostpedia for this past episode, because I wanted to come up with a theory of my own first.

Last season we had time travel, and the nuclear blast that stopped the uncontrollable flashes seems to have created an alternate universe.

My theory is that while the Losties on the island fight Esau and come into their own as island dwellers, the Losties off the island will realize something is up (coffins are missing, etc) and play a pivotal role in setting things to right on the island.

What fond memories. “Werner Herzog” reads Curious George:

Calvin on the appearance of truth among the profane:

Therefore, in reading profane authors, the admirable light of truth displayed in them should remind us, that the human mind, however much fallen and perverted from its original integrity, is still adorned and invested with admirable gifts from its Creator. If we reflect that the Spirit of God is the only fountain of truth, we will be careful, as we would avoid offering insult to him, not to reject or condemn truth wherever it appears. In despising the gifts, we insult the Giver (Institutes, 2.2.15).

You all remember the boycott of K-Mart in the 90’s? Frank, I don’t know if this reached Canada, I don’t even know if you have K-Marts. The American Family Association got Christians all over the country to purchase their goods anywhere other than at K-Mart. This was due to their ties to Walden Books, who sold/sopported pornography. The boycott was successful (though K-Mart has returned to its old, lucrative ways) , I wonder how much that helped Wal-Mart to become what it is today.

I have yet to set foot inside of a K-Mart. By the time the boycott was over, K-Mart was so pathetic that I never had a reason to go patronize them. Anyway, the principle behind that boycott was simple: you support whatever you give money to. Christians cannot support pornography in good conscience.

My father used to tell me that the battles I would fight would be the same ones he and my mother fought. His generation fought abortion, pornography, homeschooling, and theology. These battles are not over, but we are the next generation and grew up aware of these issues. Our battlefields extend beyond these, our focus lies well beyond these. We fight our parents’ battles by living the way they taught us. Our battles must be fought on new frontiers or we are not progressing.

Economics is one of the battles of our generation. So is food.  What I mean is that if we ignore these fronts, we will reduce the size of the battlefield we hand to our kids. In other words, we will not progress. We will waste the upbringing our parents gave us and the battles they fought will need to be fought all over again.

I remember when the K-Mart boycott was in full-swing, there were discussions of how far to take the issue. Maybe we should stop buying Nikes because they support child labor. It gets messy very quickly. However the mess cannot be used as an excuse to ignore the battle.

We have many potential roadblocks to get past before we can even begin fighting. With the way money works today, how can we even know what we are supporting when we buy a t-shirt or a gallon of milk? How is it possible to support our neighbors with our money when they work at the nursing home, gas station, and Wal-Mart-either places we don’t need goods/services from or places we don’t feel right supporting? If I work for an energy company that uses coal and petrol in a fashion that I am uncomfortable with, what do I do?

In my case, how can I build houses using toxic (at best), unsustainable products manufactured by people I have never met and probably don’t speak English? This is a mess, a big mess.

We have to start sorting this stuff out. We have to start asking questions, talking about it. In short, we have to take a stand. Pick a standard and live by it. Choose your place on this field (there is room for many) and make your stand there. With the knowledge we have today from writers (Berry and many others), our own study, the fruition of our parents’ teaching, and preaching (hopefully I will not be the only one preaching on this stuff), we can no longer plead ignorance as generations before us have. What we don’t know we must search out. What we do know we have to put together and formulate a plan. What are we going to teach our kids about this?

The economic principles we own are not good enough. We buy stuff because it is cheaper and believe in all sincerity that this is a virtue. For some this is ignorance, for the rest of us it is sin. For all of us it is madness. Our basic economic principle is stockpiling money, yet we point our fingers at the corporations and government. Really? Maybe we should examine our accounts and see what economic principles our last ten purchases were made based upon.