“What if scarcity is just a cultural construct, a fiction that fences us off from a better way of life?”

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For the past few days thoughts around civility, taking, sharing, scarcity, abundance, joy . . . and itching ears . . . have been rolling around in my brain. Stay with me as I believe there’s a coherent thread here.

SELF VS COMMUNITY

Civility is in short supply today. In his book The Road to Wisdom, the former head of the National Institutes of Health, Francis S. Collins, cites the breakdown of civility as a key step towards our current crisis of truth and trust. The author and social critic Stephen Carter, writing in Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy, blames this on an over-reliance on markets, a forgetfulness of the obligations we owe each other, and a lack of a moral compass in decision-making. Carter notes that . . .

“. . . the language of wanting, winning, or simply taking—the language of self—has supplanted the language of community, sharing, fairness, and riding politely alongside our fellow citizens.”

When the focus is on “getting mine” we construct a worldview that believes there isn’t enough for everyone. Our gain, according to this perspective, has to come at the expense of others. So we reach for what we feel we need to be secure. In doing so cynicism seeps in. The world’s a tough place, we tell ourselves, and we accept that as reality.

But is scarcity, in fact, a reality?

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SCARCITY AND ABUNDANCE

A recent Daily Meditation from Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation noted that when we have a worldview and a market system which reduces everything to a commodity, it leaves most of us bereft of what we really want: “a sense of belonging and relationship and purpose and beauty, which can never be commoditized.” Focused on the writings of Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Potawatomi botanist and author, the meditation began with this provocative question:

“What if scarcity is just a cultural construct, a fiction that fences us off from a better way of life?“

Kimmerer, like Carter, is concerned about the impact of unbridled capitalism. Market capitalism is not going to vanish. The faceless institutions that benefit from it are too entrenched. “But I don’t think it’s pie in the sky,” Kimmerer writes, “to imagine that we can create incentives to nurture a gift economy that runs right alongside the market economy. After all, what we crave is not trickle-down, faceless profits, but reciprocal, face-to-face relationships, which are naturally abundant . . . We have the power to change that, to develop the local, reciprocal economies that serve community rather than undermine it.” 

“I want to be part of a system [she writes] in which wealth means having enough to share, and where the gratification of meeting your family needs is not poisoned by destroying that possibility for someone else. I want to live in a society where the currency of exchange is gratitude and the infinitely renewable resource of kindness, which multiplies every time it is shared rather than depreciating with use [emphasis mine].”

That sounds very civil to me, along the lines of what Krista Tippett calls “adventurous civility”—a way of working together that honors the difficulty of what we face and the complexity of what it means to be human.

But what has led so many to follow the path of personal gain at the expense of building community?

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FOLLOWING THE WRONG TEACHERS

The Epistle in the Episcopal lectionary last Sunday from Second Timothy may have an answer.

“For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.”

Charlatans and wannabe kings who suggest that by following their teachings (or politics) you can have it all are clearly an age-old problem. Commentators have suggested that the Greek word translated “itching” literally means “to itch, rub, scratch, or tickle.” To want one’s ears “tickled” is to desire massages rather than messages, a figure of speech that refers to people’s desires, felt needs, or wants. It is these desires that impel a person to believe whatever they want to believe rather than the actual truth itself.

And we’ve been conditioned, especially in the west and most especially in America, to believe that accumulating wealth is what will make us happy, secure, even joyful. But as mentors of mine have noted on more than one occasion, what if we have it all wrong?

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THE DISLOCATION OF JOY

One astute mentor, writing in a different context, suggested how focusing on money changes what’s really important.

“What truly disturbs me about sports betting” [Deborah wrote] “is the dislocation of joy. The joy is supposed to be in watching the game. Monetizing it, as you point out, changes the focus—as if there could be no simple pleasures which are not really about cash.“

Another mentor notes that our language would lead a careful observer to believe that what we see as real is always serious, harsh, and cruel. The words “harsh reality” stand as one word, one idea.

Yet, Frank muses, “what if joy, wonder, and peace are what life is really about?” Can the harshness and bitterness that we too often see as reality be a passing phase? Frank calls on a very personal yet universal memory to make the case for the reality of joy and hope. “All babies are born with the firm belief that joy, wonder, and peace are the norms of life….Babies are born with that understanding of life. And slowly, patiently, the elders of the world teach them that their view is wrong.”

The elders of the world work to dislocate our natural joy in living life and focus it instead on the belief that the acquisition of things and money will provide joy and happiness. But you don’t have to have lived very long to know the truth of the old adage that money can’t buy happiness. We all know, deep down, that road never brings satisfaction. Money can’t buy love or true friends. Money can’t buy back your youth when you’re old.

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WHAT IF WE BELIEVED IN ABUNDANCE

At a time when so many in our political world are trying to push us apart, it helps to believe that “we are all in this together, and that addressing our own suffering while learning not to inflict it on others is part of the work we’re all here to do. So is love.”

“[W]hen you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.”

There is a second verse in scripture that’s much more famous than my “itching ears” example. It also points to how we tend to follow what glitters instead of the truth. What happens, this teaching asks, if we truly consider the lilies of the field, those flowers that neither toil nor spin? What if reality is about abundance and not scarcity? How would we live if we believed we have everything we really need?

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo of apples by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash. Photo of bread by Skyler Ewing on Unsplash. Photos of day lilies and of mother and son from Pixabay