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I'm currently reading David B. Danbom's Born in the Country: A History of Rural America, which begins by tracing the stages of Western culture from hunter-gatherer, through agricultural, then industrial and post-industrial. The shift from subsistence to surplus is what allowed us to develop the great complexity and high standard of living that we--that is, most of us--enjoy.
As with any human endeavor, there are imperfections. Great and growing inequities, and the bewildering array of scattered band-aids attempting to address them. An emphasis on getting and spending (we must do our part to keep the economy healthy). Saving and stockpiling (we must do enough to ensure our personal futures). An attendant fear that more, more, more will never be enough. (Hoarding is a signature symptom of the age.)
All of this, accompanied by guilt we attempt to assuage with charitable giving, which leaves us feeling like we haven't really done anything (money's not really real).
A distinct emphasis on the individual as opposed to the community.
"The more the focus is on money, the more of it we want; the more of it we earn, the less we seek this community life where we rely on each other." --Janisse Ray, Wildcard Quilt
We can't live like this. And that's the source of deep fear (and, some argue, the belief in apocalypse and end-times): the intuition that all this is, ultimately, unsustainable.
So we look to this excerpt from Acts, in which it took "wonders and signs" from the apostles to inspire people to forsake accumulating individual wealth to live in community, to address each other's needs.
Must it always take wonders and signs?
"We are people who believe in the first-person singular pronoun-which is our strength. But our weakness is that we don't comprehend our lives in common, the ways we create one another in the American city." Richard Rodriguez, "Gangstas"
To relinquish is to give up, to surrender claim, to let go. Buddhist teachings warn that clinging and grasping lead to suffering.
I've always been told Christian teachings were revolutionary, subversive. You know, turn the other cheek and all. So this is another one: don't cling to surplus. These days, it's not what we want to hear. But in all this modern noise, where our world is too much with us, maybe it's the balance point we need.
"Not only sands and gravels
Were once more on their travels,
But gulping muddy gallons
Great boulders off their balance
Bumped heads together dully
And started down the gully.
Whole capes caked off in slices.
I felt my standpoint shaken
In the universal crisis.
But with one step backward taken
I saved myself from going.
A world torn loose went by me.
Then the rain stopped and the blowing,
And the sun came out to dry me."
--Robert Frost, "One Step Backward Taken"
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