It's the economy, isn't it?
December 26, 2008
On the issue of fascism/socialism as rasied by Rick, I wish that people would not bandy such terms around. As the recipient of both this year as terms of abuse (now does that mean I'm really a middle of the road guy??), I think some variation of Godwin's Law should be applied. At least, I have drawn comfort from such myself when yet another plonker fires the `f' word or the `s' word in my direction. Few who have ever lived in real fascist regimes would see much similarity with the USA; for myself, I am grateful to live in a country where plonkers can call me a fascist or a socialist, and I can call them plonkers all, and nobody goes to gaol. Cheer up, Rick: it's surely a big leap from Obama's inaugural to Mussolini's Italy.
So much in response to Rick. Now to the economy.
The real problem with America (and the West in general) is not the idolatry that pervades politics; it is the idolatry that shapes all of our individual identities. I am struck by reports that, while credit spending is down this year, it is perhaps diminished by only 8 to 10 %. I listened to Pat Buchanan and Mika Brzezinsky this morning, discussing how the collapse of 1929 was followed by years of austerity; but that, whatever the wider collapse, today people seem unwilling to face reality and really tighten their belts; both pundits agreed that it was because credit was not so much a function of rational reflection but of deep-seated irrational behaviour.
The economy needs a certain amount of credit to promote investment, innovation, to keep the wheels of the economy oiled; but when credit becomes the major engine of the economy -- and it is hard to see how a consumer-driven economy like ours can avoid such a result -- then the overall economy is little more than one vast pyramid scheme driven not by hard work, investment, and innovation but by get rich quick laziness. A bublle built on thin, very thin, air. This kind of situation is not fuelled not by rational investment strategies but by hedonism, byt that old washed-up gambler idea that the next spin of the roulette wheel will bring the big jackpot (and even if it doesn't, hey, it was still fun trying). And credit of the almost unbounded kind we have seen over the last decade or so is the modern economic equivalent of a Tower of Babel -- a means of shaking off limits, of breaking old rules and establishing new ones, of making ourselves into gods. I have often joked in class that I wish I were a Catholic because then I would have a better vocabulary for describing what I do when I buy something on credit: I take nothing and I make it into something; I transubstiate a plastic card and an electronic implulse into a book, a car, a holiday. Buying when I don't have the real power to buy makes me god, a creator and a transubstantiator, and fuels my worship of self, as I stand in awe of my god-like powers. Thus, even now, as the credit markets lie in ruins, we are so blinded by our idolatry (PS. 115!) that we cannot stop.
I hope Rev. Warren does not blow it on inauguration day; but the inauguration is a sideshow. As a former president said `It's the economy, stupid!' It really is -- though not in the sense that that person intended, I am sure. The economy, and the function that it is of the human behaviour underlying it, is the really worrying thing at the moment, not because it speaks of a credit crunch or poor economic policies or years of hardship to come; but because it witnesses to the insatiable insanity of human idolatry.
So much in response to Rick. Now to the economy.
The real problem with America (and the West in general) is not the idolatry that pervades politics; it is the idolatry that shapes all of our individual identities. I am struck by reports that, while credit spending is down this year, it is perhaps diminished by only 8 to 10 %. I listened to Pat Buchanan and Mika Brzezinsky this morning, discussing how the collapse of 1929 was followed by years of austerity; but that, whatever the wider collapse, today people seem unwilling to face reality and really tighten their belts; both pundits agreed that it was because credit was not so much a function of rational reflection but of deep-seated irrational behaviour.
The economy needs a certain amount of credit to promote investment, innovation, to keep the wheels of the economy oiled; but when credit becomes the major engine of the economy -- and it is hard to see how a consumer-driven economy like ours can avoid such a result -- then the overall economy is little more than one vast pyramid scheme driven not by hard work, investment, and innovation but by get rich quick laziness. A bublle built on thin, very thin, air. This kind of situation is not fuelled not by rational investment strategies but by hedonism, byt that old washed-up gambler idea that the next spin of the roulette wheel will bring the big jackpot (and even if it doesn't, hey, it was still fun trying). And credit of the almost unbounded kind we have seen over the last decade or so is the modern economic equivalent of a Tower of Babel -- a means of shaking off limits, of breaking old rules and establishing new ones, of making ourselves into gods. I have often joked in class that I wish I were a Catholic because then I would have a better vocabulary for describing what I do when I buy something on credit: I take nothing and I make it into something; I transubstiate a plastic card and an electronic implulse into a book, a car, a holiday. Buying when I don't have the real power to buy makes me god, a creator and a transubstantiator, and fuels my worship of self, as I stand in awe of my god-like powers. Thus, even now, as the credit markets lie in ruins, we are so blinded by our idolatry (PS. 115!) that we cannot stop.
I hope Rev. Warren does not blow it on inauguration day; but the inauguration is a sideshow. As a former president said `It's the economy, stupid!' It really is -- though not in the sense that that person intended, I am sure. The economy, and the function that it is of the human behaviour underlying it, is the really worrying thing at the moment, not because it speaks of a credit crunch or poor economic policies or years of hardship to come; but because it witnesses to the insatiable insanity of human idolatry.
