[Oe List ...] Thomas Berry, the Social Imbalance and the US Supreme Court

[Herman Greene]

I have read a remarkable book by Paul Schafer called Revolution or
Renaissance: Making the Transition from an Economic Age to a Cultural Age,
which I highly recommend. Here is what he says about the economic:

 

Schafer's book is about a transition to a cultural age (I would call it an
ecological-cultural age). It would be very different from our present age,
which he describes as an "economic age." He writes:

 

Like every age, the economic age is predicated on a very specific way of
looking at the world, acting in the world, and valuing things in the world.
It is based primarily, if not exclusively on economics, which yields an
"economic worldview" that is by far the most powerful worldview in existence
today. This worldview is based on the conviction that satisfaction of
people's needs and wants in all areas of life can be attended to most
effectively by making economics and economies the centerpiece of society,
and the principal preoccupation of individual, institutional, municipal,
regional, national and international development. Through commitment to this
conviction, it is believed that wealth can be increased most effectively,
the supply and demand for goods and services can be satisfied most
efficiently, living standards and the quality of life can be improved most
fully, population growth can be curtailed most judiciously, poverty can be
reduced if not eliminated, and the natural environment can be managed and
turned to humanity's advantage. (pp. 93-34)

 

Schafer identifies the fundamental flaw in this conviction as the belief
that economics, economies and materialism "cause[s] everything in society
and constitutes the basis of everything." To the contrary, he explains that
basing everything on economics defeats the objectives thought to flow from
it.

 

The economic age makes it impossible to achieve balanced, harmonious and
equitable relationships between the economic part of human activities and
other activities, because everything is reduced to economics, economies, and
materials, and made dependent on them. It also makes it impossible to deal
with major excesses, imbalances, and deficiencies in the world system and in
people's lives because the emphasis is on means-production, distribution,
consumption, profits, products, the market-rather than ends, such as a
healthy environment, people, human welfare, sustainable communities, cities,
countries and societies, and real fulfillment and happiness in life. (pp.
93-94)

 

In assessing the economic age he says, on the good side, it "has produced
countless benefits for people and countries in many if not all parts of the
world and for the world as a whole." (p. 130) On the bad side, he says that
effects of the economic age, which are "almost diametrically opposed to [the
good side]," mean

 

there are real dangers and risks ahead for humanity if the economic age is
perpetuated. Material demands will be created that are beyond the capacity
of the natural environment to fulfill, and substantial disparities will be
experienced in income, wealth, and resources, between the rich and poor
countries and people of the world. This will cause real hardships as
resources are used up. (p. 130).

 

With regard to the environment, he writes,

 

Clearly the environmental crisis will not be resolved as long as the
economic age is perpetuated. The economic age is predicated on the
production, distribution and consumption of goods and services, rather than
on intimate relationship between people and the natural environment. The
more economic growth takes place, the more damage will be done to the
natural environment and the carrying capacity of the Earth, the more
resources will be consumed and contaminated, and the less will be available
for future generations. This will result in even more rapid depletion of
scarce renewable and non-renewable natural resources, as well as a great
deal more pollution, global warming, the spread of toxic substances, the
extinction of many species, far more environmental damage, and growing
shortages and higher prices for strategic resources such as wood, water,
gas, oil coal, electricity, fish, precious metals, and arable land. These
problems will be exacerbated whenever consumer demands and expectations are
created that are high in material inputs and outputs, as they are in various
parts of the world.

 

The problem here is that no distinction is made between consumer needs and
consumer wants in the economic age, because both contribute to economic
growth and development. Nevertheless, since consumer wants have a way of
multiplying indefinitely, if the experiences of the western countries are
any guide, this will aggravate even more an ecological situation that is
close to the breaking point. (p. 131)

 

He concludes, 

 

This is why perpetuation of the economic age into the future is so dangerous
and potentially life-threatening. People will not sit idly by while their
environments are devastated, higher and higher prices are charged for
increasingly scarce resources, living standards are reduced, and life takes
on negative rather than positive connotations. This is a recipe for
revolution and for global disaster. This acts as an early warning signal
that violent outcomes are in store if the problems confronting humanity are
not dealt with successfully. (p. 134)

 

He makes the case for why violent revolutions (including terrorism) will not
avert the catastrophe and calls for renaissance, which he says 

 

is best realized by incorporating the economic age and a great deal more,
into a broader, deeper, and more fundamental way of looking at living,
reality, history and the human condition . . . . The world needs strong
economies and the strengths of the economic age if improvements are to be
made in material living standards and people's lives, but it needs them to
be counterbalanced and constrained by powerful social, artistic,
educational, scientific, spiritual, and human activities. (p. 134-35).

 

Further, he says renaissance cannot be based on the ideas of the current
economic age:

 

[Some] contend that the problems [confronting humanity] can be solved by
developing further the theoretical ideas and practical policies [of the
economic age.] However, while making such improvements is imperative, they
will not make it possible to come to grips with the demanding and
debilitating problems that have loomed up on the global horizon in recent
years. The economic age is based on theoretical, practical, historical and
philosophical foundations that aggravate these problems more than alleviate
them. Take the environmental crisis, for example: It is not possible to
incorporate the natural environment into the economic age after the fact.
Clearly what is needed now, more than ever, is a body of thought and
practice, a world system, and an age that open up a commanding place for the
natural environment and for the intimate relationship that people have with
it at its very core. (p. 133)

 

He then identifies these key directions for the future:

 

1.       Surely the most important of these is the creation of a new
theoretical, practical, historical and philosophical framework for the world
of the future.

2.       Secondly a very high priority will have to be placed on dealing
with the intimate relationship between people and the natural environment.
Failure to deal with the environmental crisis will cause severe hardships in
every part of the world, as well as even more conflict, confrontation,
hostility, and violence.

3.       Thirdly a much higher priority will have to be placed on people and
matters of human welfare than on products, profits and the market, in order
to create the sensitivities and sensibilities that are required to open up
many more opportunities for people to live creative, constructive and
fulfilling lives, as well as to participate fully, actively and freely in
the public and private decisions that affect their lives. 

4.       Finally, a more effective balance will have to be achieved between
consumption and conservation, competition and cooperation, scientism,
aestheticism and humanism, economics and ethics, and spiritualism and
materialism. This is imperative if nature and other species are to be
treated with the dignity and respect they deserve, if people are to be
provided with opportunities to realize their full potential and if humanity
is to go fruitfully into the future.[1]

 

It seems to me that the last two (three and four) are dependent on the first
two (one and two). Out of this new framework and this new intimacy with the
natural environment will come changed priorities and balance.

 

  _____  

From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf
Of R Williams
Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2010 9:01 AM
To: Order Ecumenical Community; dialogue-request at wedgeblade.net
Subject: [Oe List ...] Thomas Berry,the Social Imbalance and the US Supreme
Court

 


Colleagues,

 

Many will remember the analysis we did of the imbalance of the social
process wherein the economic dynamic dominates, the political dynamic is the
subservient lackey of the economic and the cultural dynamic has collapsed
into relative insignificance.

 

An example of the continuing validity of that analysis is seen in the
decision of the US Supreme Court this past week to treat corporations as
individuals in terms of their ability to participate in and influence
federal elections--and this in an environment where already the pandering of
the US Congress, both parties, to special interests has rendered it almost
totally ineffective.

 

In that light I ran across this quote from Thomas Berry in his 2006 book
EveningThoughts, pages 102-103.  The underlining is mine.

 

The economic corporations--industrial, commercial, financial--now, in a
sense, own the planet...

 

The educational (cultural) establishment functions within the context of a
plunder-consumption economy...

 

Political decision-making is so extensively controlled by economic powers
that the democratic principles of personal freedom and participatory
government are subverted.  The money needed for elections must come from
corporate wealth in some form.  Legislatures are controlled by the economic
powers.  What needs to be understood is that the legal establishment in the
United States, including the judiciary, at an early period, bonded with the
commercial-industrial establishment against citizen groups and agricultural
interests.

 

This is as good a summation of the current situation as I've found!

 

Randy

 


  _____  

[1] Number 4 will be especially important, if, as David Orr asserts, "under
the multiple stresses [described in this book], it is likely that economic
contraction, not expansion will become the norm," (Orr, p. 29) and "economic
growth, as presently conceived, cannot be sustained nor should it be." (p.
31) He reaches these conclusions because (i) on a humanistic level,
"economic growth beyond some threshold [, rather than increasing humanistic
values,] generates consumerism, selfishness, and egoism, corrodes character
and foreshortens concern" (p. 30); (ii) on an ecological level, the faster
economies have grown, the greater the cumulative ecological damage"; (p. 31)
and, (iii) finally, on a human survival level, because our politics, economy
and manner of living do not fit bio-physical realities (p. 33)

 

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