From Bringing it to the Table: He (Elmer Lapp, a small farmer in Lancaster, Pa.) is also aware that the pattern of subsistence is a community pattern. He says, for instance, that he deals with the little country stores rather than the supermarkets in the city. The little country stores support the life of the community, whereas the supermarkets support “the economy” at the expense of communities.”
This forces a question I have had for a while. What is the “economy?” The stimulus package Obama gave to America was designed to be a shot of epinephrine into the coutry’s failing economy. “If the economy is good, everything will be fine for us.” This is the dominant underlying assumption of every bit of news we have heard in the last two years. But, this is as absurd as trusting in money. I am angry that I have bought this line to some degree, but it is simply not true. It is a line right out of the liturgy of Materialism.
But what is even more interesting is that it as soon as we recognize this line as idolatry, we have to ask how the economy became a god. Not everything about the economy is bad, but what is this thing? I can wrap my mind around the economy of a family, a business, even a town. But I can’t figure out what “the economy” that is being referred to actually is. It is not the economy of the USA. It is not something that can be mapped or described. It does not describe anything itself. It is a mystery.
It seems to me that it is a god. It is a colossal distraction in the very least. Why should I feel the need to support something that has no relationship to me? Why should I fear something that no one can describe to me, that I can’t be sure even exists? This is too much. That I should base most of my actions on a day-to-day basis on something that has been conjured up like this is absurd, and culpable.
Let’s say it does exist and it is the standard by which we measure our economic health as a country and as individuals. Why should I make a decision based on the good of the economy (for the sake of the individuals it contains) that clearly does not benefit my neighbors? This is a contradiction in terms. It is a contradiction of ethics. At this point, we are being asked, solicited, even paid to support our economy. Yet this does not help our neighbors, it hurts them (I think on this forum I can safely assert this?). When it comes to this point it is obvious that we can no longer give ourselves to this pursuit or any pursuit that is based on this line.
On December 30th, Half Past Noon will turn 4 years old. Its first year was pretty slow, but even still that’s a long time. Chris, how about redesigning this thing to celebrate? Also, I’d love to hear from everyone how their life circumstances and thinking have changed in the past 3 years.
We adopted Ponyo into our family because, unlike our landlords, my wife and I are both what you would call “animal people.” Actually, unlike A and D, we’re cat people, but when you’re renting you take what you can get. And we could get a fish. So we did.
I thought I’d be relatively disinterested in a fish – after all, fish are slimy and aren’t very talkative – but it turns out that marriage has fostered within me all sorts of ancient and mysterious impulses and among them is the impulse to raise a child. Of course, a fish is nothing at all like a real live wake-you-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-spit-up-on-your-flannel-pajamas child, but again: you take what you can get, and we could get a fish. And so, for better or for worse, we’ve pretty much adopted this little goldfish into our family and with it all of the stereotypical expressions of parenthood.
Take, for example, the picture above. My wife snapped that photo earlier this afternoon, all the while cooing at how cute our fish looks and wanting to capture her from an angle that correctly represented her unique shape and markings. When I went to select a good introductory photo, I was pleased to find that over a dozen pictures had already been taken, each featuring different perspectives, distinct lighting, and appropriate framing. While it was convenient for me that such pictures existed, a dark suspicion looms in my mind that they’re actually going to be compiled into some sort of baby calendar sometime during the next month.
In stark contrast to the above, consider the following picture, which I took not long before I started composing this post:
You’ll note the inferior lighting, blurry caudal fin, and peculiar orientation of our fish. That is because after some amount of reading, I have become convinced that Ponyo is suffering from constipation and as a result is having difficulty regulating her swim bladder. The behavior being exhibited in the picture above is called “nose standing,” and is indicative of internal problems due to trauma, overfeeding, or poor diet. I have subsequently prescribed a day of fasting and then a strict diet of de-shelled frozen peas, which serve as a laxative and should clear out any blockages in the intestinal tract.
Of course, this swim bladder issue has been something of a mania for me all day. I know more about goldfish – their history and status in various Chinese dynasties, the varietals found almost exclusively in Japan, common ailments and courses of treatment – than I ever really wanted to know.
But I guess I’m that dad. The dad that reads obsessively, goes grey after the first month of collecting stool samples and plotting their pH levels, and ultimately overconditions his poor child. And I hadn’t even realized it until, after hours of study and relating various findings to my wife, she looked at me and said:
“When we have our first child, you’re going to go crazy.”
Emmanuel Jal did a TED Talk not too long ago, and every time I run across this guy I like him even more. The talk below is long, but well worth the investment:
This video evokes the usual platitudes for me – get off your bohunkus, stop armchair charity and start actually helping – but there are a few things that were absolutely striking to me.
The first is Jal’s version of these same platitudes, because his English is so plain and his poetry so earnest. “What would I be?” The punch line is powerful. I quote from the song:
I remember the time when I was small
When I couldn’t read or write at all
Now I’m all grown up, I got my education
The sky is the limit and the cup is running over
How I prayed for this day to come
And I pray that the world find wisdom
To give the boy in need some assistance
Instead of putting up resistance, Yeah
Sitting and waiting for the politics to fix this
It ain’t gonna happen
They’re all sitting on they asses
Popping champagne and scrunching up the masses
Coming from a refugee boy-soldier
But I still got my dignity
I gotta say it again
If Emma never rescued me
I’d be a corpse on the African plain
Second is Jal’s dance. It starts around 16:40, when Jal announces “I’m gonna get crazy now.” I can’t get over that dance. It looks like the way I should have spent every Gloria Patri I’ve ever sung, so sincere and vulnerable and beautiful and while it’s unlike any dance I’ve ever seen, I know exactly and precisely what it means. It is the dance of a man made alive by love.
It’s not that I remember this video, nor that I still enjoy it. It’s more that this song came out in 1999, for the Love of Pete, and it’s still in regular rotation on my iPod as if it came out within the last few years.
Hello there fellas. Davey, I hope our Mother is treating you well. I have had something on my mind for a while. It’s finally developing into thoughts that can be discussed. Strangely enough, it was provoked into discussion by watching “Julie and Julia” last night. That is a fine movie, it provoked alot of thought and then discussion between Kristen and I. So here I am to open it up on a larger forum.
I am a contractor. By that I mean I make a contract with people to build something for them, then I build it, and they pay me. If I am to be a successful contractor, I will find ways to increase my profit margins by getting faster, paying less for materials, paying less for labor, and offering a service that customers are willing to pay more for. My only problem is that I don’t want to be a businessman, I want to build houses.
I want to get better at the processes that mark out foundations, set grade, frame structures, set windows, wire outlets, plumb supply and waste systems, install trim, set doors etc. I want to invest myself in learning and perfecting a craft that I enjoy. I want to be an old crotchety guy who can get more done with a hammer in a half an hour than a crew of young bucks can with all their fancy new tools. I want to be a craftsman. My tools, materials, customers, and the transformation of something that isn’t into something that is. That is plenty enough to keep me busy and challenged for at least a couple more years.
But I can’t, I have to be a successful businessman. I have to focus on writing tight contracts, performance agreements, realistic schedules, marketing, overhead, and a host of other things that have no more to do with building than Priuses have to do with saving the ozone. If I don’t do those things I will not get much business, I will not have anybody to work with me, and my customers will not trust me.
Surely this was not the way they used to do it? Craftsmen cannot be businessmen, or they would be poor craftsmen. Is this why the craftsman is a dying breed? Why must there be a middleman, a manager between the guy who wants something built and the guy who builds stuff? It seem that mostly the answer to that last question has to do with people seeing an opportunity to fill a gap and make some money. But why the gap? Why must a homeowner hire a guy to manage the guy who can do what he (the homeowner) wants done? Are people that detached and incapable of managing their own project? Can’t the average Joe who has or can get enough money to remodel his house also hack it enough to get a guy who knows how to use wood, metal and tools to make him a new set of rooms?
The heart of the issue for me is that this “business” model we operate on hijacks the other business that people used to do. I’m not mad at corporate America, I’m not taking the artist’s “me and my paintbrush” reclusion, I just want to pursue what I love doing. Sometimes I’d genuinely rather be driving a dump truck than being a carpenter, because I like driving trucks and if you are a truck driver that is exactly what you do.
The other side of it is the money. Everything is about success, about survival, about making enough money to then go do something else. What about the product? What about being successful at framing? The guy who manages the guys who drive trucks probably doesn’t even have a CDL, much less any idea what to do when the brakes go out on a 60,000 lb truck. But he is there, getting paidto tell drivers to haul gravel by people who want gravel hauled. I know, I know, division of labor. But there is an end to that road too, packed with people who get no fullfillment out of what they do. But hey, whatever makes the $$$, right? People do not care what they do anymore. They just want a job. They just want the security of a paycheck. This is no way to live. Yetwe have to have a paycheck so that we can buy from the myriad of vendors we get our food, clothes, and stuffs from–and so we can make enough to regularly and one day finally get away from the thing that gets you a paycheck.
Frank, you can probably relate directly to this since you work in a construction company now. Davey, you are interested in political theology and you love talking about capitalism. Austin, you have read some of the weirdest stuff I have never heard of. Chris, you are well aquainted with the business world and businessmen. Brian, you know me pretty well, you know the direction we are headed as a family. Help me out here. I don’t really have a handle on this thing yet, I need to know what to read, what topics to look up. What is the history on this topic? Where did we get this model and why is it so dominant? Is this one of the downsides of capitalism? Where and when did we get locked into this paycheck system?
This may sound like I’m dissatisfied or disillusioned with my job, like I’m having a mid-life crisis when I’m 25. I am not, I just do not want to carve grooves now that I will run in for the rest of my career or life. I’m starting to run up against things in the Christian business world that don’t jive with the direction we are taking as a family. I also care very much about my profession. I do not want it to get shaken up and emptied out by some god.
I realize I have not stumbled upon anything necessarily new or insightful, but that’s just the trouble. I don’t really know what I’m running into here. I have been rambling on now for over a page, and I’m not sure I’ve actually talked about what I’m trying to get at. So help me out.
The basic idea is that this fellow – Johnny Monsarrat – sets up a pagoda of sorts at various public gatherings and allows people to submit questions to him by writing them down on a card. He writes the answers on the backs of the cards, and then puts them back up in the booth. My favorite so far:
To which he answers:
I mean, I don’t necessarily agree with everything this guy says – at one point he espouses Inner Chimp theories – but finding things like this always makes me ask: “What are you doing with your life? Why are you doing that?”
HT: Jim Woodell, an economic developer type in PA.
Earlier today, I almost posted Krugman’s new article about how the unique features of healthcare make it unsuitable for control by traditional free market formulations. You can read the article here. The reason why somebody like me – who is swinging so rapidly from libertarianism to some sort of socialist shenanigans that my cheeks are getting all flappy in the wind – fixates on healthcare is because it is one of the clearest examples of how capitalism is ill-suited to direct our energy and efforts toward the Things That Really Matter.
I thought Krugman hit the nail on the head. The profit motive – the thing that makes capitalism tick and calibrates the supply and demand curves to resonate in harmony with the universe – can pretty easily rub up against the Hippocratic oath.
Enter Mankiw. He suggests, very wisely I think, that the healthcare debate turns on the issue of trust. A quote:
Perhaps a lot of the disagreement over healthcare reform, and maybe other policy issues as well, stems from the fundamental question of what kind of institutions a person trusts. Some people are naturally skeptical of profit-seeking firms; others are naturally skeptical of government.
Later:
This philosophical inclination most likely influences my views of the healthcare debate. The more power a centralized government authority asserts, the more worried I am that the power will be misused either purposefully or, more likely, because of some well-intentioned but mistaken social theory. I prefer reforms that set up rules of the game but end up with power over key decisions as decentralized as possible.
What puzzles me is that Paul seems so ready to trust solutions that give a large role to the federal government. (In the past, for instance, he has advocated a single payer for healthcare.) I understand that trust of centralized authority is common among liberals. But here is the part of puzzles me: Over the past eight years, Paul has tried to convince his readers that Republicans are stupid and venal. History suggests that Republicans will run the government about half the time. Does he really want to turn control of healthcare half the time to a group of policymakers that he considers stupid and venal?
Usually, Mankiw’s critics berate him for being glib, uninsightful, and even flippant. This, however, is the most helpful thing I’ve read on the healthcare debate in months. I daresay this same argument can be used to dissect many of the debates we’ve been having lately.
