Labor Day Weekend is over and it's the real beginning of the new year (January 1 is just a calendar detail). It's also the beginning of what's known as the "silly season," aka the election season leading up to the U.S. midterms.

Observing the campaigns can be dizzying: careening polls, conflicting policies, appalling ads. Since it's often said that "politics is downstream from culture," maybe it's past time to re-examine our culture. As Praxis Circle Contributor Michael Novak once asked:

"What would it profit the human race if we were to achieve a higher level of political and economic liberty than ever before, only to live like pigs, enslaved to our desires without reflection and deliberation? This would be a travesty, for it is not only our political and economic systems that must be worthy of our human nature, but also our habits of moral living."

What habits does our Western culture promote these days? Self-discipline, self-restraint, or even mere moderation? As Contributor Dr. Anne Bradley states, "There's no macro-economics without micro-economics," so the financial habits inculcated into individuals (micro) by our culture will ultimately have a large effect on our governmental (macro) policies and politics. 

We currently see our culture promoting hyper-consumerism, personal financial consequences be damned. According to the New York Fed, U.S. "credit card balances saw their largest year-over-year percentage increase in more than twenty years." While some of this may be due to inflation and its effect on average households to even buy gas and groceries, it undoubtedly also reflects our desire to buy, buy, buy, regardless of our ability to pay, pay, pay.

With the onslaught of social media advertising (in service of all those digitally-perfected ideal images), the U.S. advertising industry projects 13% growth in 2022 in ad spending for a total of over $300 billion for the first 

Buy, buy, buy!

time EVER. (See here.) All of it targeted at the spending habits of our citizens. All of it aimed at maintaining our focus on material objects.

While discussing atheism, Dr. Bradley points out in this video that rabid materialism can have an outsize effect on public policy because what citizens value will lead that policy.

The effects of this materialistic consumerism can be even more far-reaching as Jason Adkins wrote in The Central Minnesota Catholic Magazine upon Michael Novak's death:

"Prescient thinkers such as Novak and Pope John Paul II — whose encyclical “Centesimus Annus” shares many strands of thought with Novak’s Caritapolis — knew that without the proper moral and anthropological basis, the triumph of democratic capitalism would turn into soft totalitarianism, and that we would indeed have a consumerist economy that commodifies persons."

What can we do? In the larger national picture, we can follow Dr. Rusty Reno's (our newest Contributor) advice and start teaching our school children to have values that transcend the merely material. 

On the personal level, each of us can examine or re-examine our own worldview to identify our own values and how they affect and are affected by our culture. We can also each consider Mary Eberstadt's (Praxis Circle Contributor and Advisor) thoughts on self-discipline, moral codes, and ultimately, our worldview.

"Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can't consume much if you sit still and read books."

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

September 23: At 1:30 PM, The Trinity Forum hosts an online conversation with Dr. James K.A. Smith, author of How to Inhabit Time and philosophy professor at Calvin University. Dr. Smith will discuss how to move from living in "nowhen" ("disconnected from the past and distracted from the present") to actually inhabiting time with temporal awareness. Register here.

September 30: The National Association of Scholars (NAS) presents a webinar titled "Combatting Cancel Culture: Why Diversity of Thought Still Matters on Indigenous Topics." The webinar will be moderated by Dr. Elizabeth Weiss, San Jose State University anthropology professor and will include in its panel: Dr. Frances Widdowson, author and professor; Mr. Stuart Reges, computer science and engineering teaching professor at the University of Washington; Dr. Matthew Garrett, professor of history and ethnic studies at Bakersfield College; and Dr. Timothy Ives, author of Stones of Contention. Register here.