CHAPTER TWO (from The American Psyche in Search of its Soul) In the years immediately following WWII, a remarkable shift occurred in American economic life. For the first time in history, we reached a stage of prosperous development in which we could produce far more goods and services than anyone needed. Various factors combined to create this new situation, including advanced industrial technology, wartime expansion of the economy, the destruction of Europe’s industrial base while our own remained unscathed, and women added to the workforce. To sustain all this growth, to continue paying wages and continue expanding profits, it was deemed necessary to excessively stimulate our habits of consumption, to artificially increase the public’s appetite for what was being produced. No longer were manufacturers content with simply determining what people wanted and needed. Thenceforward, to a degree never witnessed before, it became necessary to learn effective ways of persuading people that they wanted and needed all sorts of things that they had never wanted or needed before. As a result, the public was soon being bombarded with non-stop messages to fall into line and do what we were being told: the duty of Americans, it became clear, was to go shopping. The ‘good life’ had been confused with the ‘goods’. Just as advertisers were beginning to seek out scientific advice to help them develop more effective methods and procedures for what was casually dubbed ‘engineering consent’, television appeared on the scene. Soon the nation became practically catatonic. Consumers became targets rather than individuals, and the professional persuaders began using heavy artillery. Rather than explaining a product’s quality or usefulness, they concentrated on ways to manipulate our suggestibility, our fears, our least becoming motivations. Using every technique they could garner from science, advertisers soon computerized vast amounts of information about our personal lives and buying habits as discerned from focus groups, psychological interviewing techniques, brain-wave measurements, studies of reactions to various sounds and pictures, etc. But it continued to become increasingly difficult to reach people in the midst of the exploding carnival of marketing and promotion, so as consumers became more jaded the marketers became more aggressive. To accommodate the ever-increasing number of things to be sold, advertisements had to become ever briefer. The effect of this was to shorten the public’s already meager attention span: an image has to hit home deeply and instantly or it will never be noticed. It soon became apparent that this is best accomplished by evoking negative emotions such as anxiety, fear and envy -- which is a far cry from simply distributing useful information about products, which required time and thoughtfulness. The goal was clear: consumers needed to think less and buy more. A further consequence of this new consumer culture was that it became necessary for us to become a nation of waste-makers. With so much being produced, we have to continually discard the old to make room for the new. The promise of instant gratification is necessary, but the economy will stall if products satisfy us for too long. It is therefore necessary for things to break down quickly and need to be thrown away and replaced often. With the general public virtually hypnotized into supporting these trends, more and more wealth was accumulating into fewer and fewer hands, giving big American business immense power to determine conditions here and around the world. This awesome financial power linked up with exuberant postwar feelings of patriotism and manifest destiny, and soon the American public was convinced that anything that interfered with the expansion of American corporate power was un-American, and thus began the incessant and peculiar identification of Capitalism with Freedom. To maintain overwhelming public support for corporate America, public relations experts were brought in. The public needed to receive the appropriate messages, not just from advertising, but from the arts, entertainment, government, schools, museums, libraries -- in short, from all avenues of modern culture. Now, in consequence, our lives are immersed in a steady stream of repetitive, continuous propaganda, perpetuating the various myths of economics, politics and science, and steadily eroding our individuality. Propaganda is not concerned with what is best in men and women, it is not concerned with noble feelings or admirable goals. “Propaganda”, writes Jacques Ellul, “does not aim to elevate man, but to make him serve.” "It must therefore utilize the most common feelings, the most widespread ideas, the crudest patterns, and in so doing place itself on a very low level with regard to what it wants men to do and to what end. Hate, hunger, and pride make better levers of propaganda than do love or impartiality."
substance. Although the original conception of democracy meant that social equality was more important than a social elite, and therefore the symbols of an elite were rejected, we now take the contorted alternative view that the symbols and styles of elites should be mass produced and made available to everyone. The American ideal of equality has come to mean that we all have an equal right to possess the same stuff. Of course, this mass production implies mass standardization, and thus any genuine uniqueness which was available when production meant handicraft has now been replaced by the ‘sameness’ of what is available to everyone. In response to this, there are always those few whose need to be noticed causes them to present themselves in a manner so bizarre as to stand out in the crowd. This never lasts long, however, since whatever stands out in the crowd typically becomes the next trend, the next standardized fashion. We see the powerful mesmerizing effects of advertising, public relations, and fashion, in the pursuit of the perfect car, the perfect body, the perfect house, the perfect mate. We see it in our participation in certain activities, and our passive adherence to certain beliefs, that make us acceptable to whatever crowd we wish to join. We continue to speak sentimentally of our great respect for ‘rugged individualism’, but large-scale contemporary production, trade, and consumption require centralized authority, massive planning, and a willingness of so-called individuals to become cogs in the economic machine. A community of genuine individuals, held together by love, is thus transformed into an efficient ant hill, held together by money and power. In addition to any legitimate help we may be offering to politically oppressed people in their struggles against totalitarian regimes, we insist that they emulate our strange way of life. As part of the bargain for receiving our military aid, we rip apart the tapestry of their traditions and culture, sweep away their customs and individuality, offer them ‘modern technology and free trade of consumer goods’ in return, and thus ensure that their lives can soon become as trivialized and alienated as our own: “For a zoned-out, stupified populace,” notes Morris Berman, “democracy will be nothing more than the right to shop, or to choose between Wendy’s and Burger King, or to stare at CNN and think that this managed infotainment is actually the news.” But contrary to the complaints of many critics of capitalism, the chief responsibility for all of this does not lie with Madison Avenue or the lords of corporate power. The responsibility lies with us, with our own ‘suggestibility’, the astonishing ease with which we abdicate all efforts to think and reason for ourselves, and believe whatever we are told. This is all a consequence of the inverted soul: the demanding Body is active, making acquisitiveness the only goal of life; the Mind is passive, benumbed by all the images and messages; and the Heart is shut down, the victim of pornography and brutality. As a result, just as the appetites have taken control of the soul rather than supporting the soul, so Plato’s ‘Merchants’ have become the usurping rulers of our political and cultural life, while the ‘Guardians’ remain silent and asleep. This is not how a soul is supposed to be governed, and it is not how an economy is supposed to be conducted. As Jacob learned from Laban, and as Christ taught in his parables, it is good to increase material wealth and abundance (to be ‘fruitful and multiply’), it is necessary and honorable to learn how to take care of ourselves, our families, our neighbors, our posterity. But the impulse to do this cannot come from ‘Below’, it cannot come from meaningless greed. The impulse has to come from ‘Above’, from the creative Mind, from the Spirit. The responsibility of Plato’s ‘Merchants’ is to support society, to improve the material well-being of the citizenry, to be of service to Life under the guidance of what is highest and best in Life. Prosperity, both personal and cultural, results from a combination of effort, excellence, intelligence, and good fortune. It is certainly true that luck and serendipity will often play a role, giving some players an inexplicable and unearned advantage. But the other qualities are usually far more important, and they ought to be respected and admired, not envied and despised while we exalt mediocrity. In feudal times, the wealth of the nobility was just about always unearned, and the poor had a negligible likelihood of ever improving their lot. It is often overlooked that the rise of capitalism was part of the Enlightenment’s agenda of bringing prosperity to everyone. And although it is far from perfect, although it can certainly be abused by corporate greed, Ponzi schemes, and so forth, it is still far more promising than any other economic system so far devised. Unlike the feudal system, wealth can move from one person to another in a capitalist system. A successful business not only accumulates wealth in the hands of its owner, but also serves as a source of opportunity and prosperity for others: employees, vendors, even competitors and imitators. This is not just theory. I am by no means a ‘supply-side economist’, but I have had the experience of starting a small business, employing a couple of people, and dreaming of doing well and employing more. And I’ve had the experience of seeing the business fail, and having to lay people off instead. This is a fairly common experience in America. One can certainly, even unavoidably, extrapolate from these experiences that when such businesses do succeed they give employment and increased wealth to many people. Failing in business is of course disheartening, but business is to a great extent a matter of accepting risk. It is certainly true that if government policies have no safety factors built in (from corporate laws that allow people to separate their personal belongings from their company’s assets, to regulations that protect novices from unfair business practices, to the right to file for bankruptcy if everything collapses) few people would be willing to take such risk. On the other hand, too much regulation – forcing business owners to spend all their time filling out endless forms, and all their money meeting the demands of countless well-intentioned administrative agencies – also puts a chill on entrepreneurial activity since the scant remaining profits are simply not worth the effort. Wealth is not a static quantity. If it were a static quantity, it would be true that the prosperity of one person can only come at the expense of someone else. But in a capitalist system, new wealth can be created and increased, through brilliance, innovation, and effort. This statement is proven by the negative: that is, in a capitalist system it must also be true that the total amount of wealth can decrease and evaporate as a result of stupidity, ravenousness, and short-sightedness. The economic catastrophe of the Fall of 2008 has given us a powerful and undeniable proof of the dynamic quality of wealth. The dollars that Bernie Madoff’s clients lost are not hidden somewhere in a drawer. They simply do not exist. In far too many ways, it is clear that the Enlightenment agenda of open-minded scientific inquiry and the unfettered exercise of human reason has been overwhelmed by commercialism and turned into scientism and group-think. When massive corporations seek only to maintain their own power by artificially stimulating consumer demand and then stuffing the consumer’s face with everything they now imagine they want, our souls and our civilization continue to devolve and decay. But when entrepreneurs, through shrewdness and innovation, create wealth by benefiting others as well as themselves, this increased prosperity improves all of life and serves God’s purpose. This is why the Master in Christ’s parable welcomed the slave who had ‘turned five talents into ten’ back into His joy, but threw the slave who merely maintained the status quo back into the outer darkness. Prosperity is the goal of economics. But for society as a whole, economic prosperity is a means to an end – and all too often we have perverted this ideal through envy and greed, making the accumulation of wealth an end in itself, making it the cold relentless motive for all the decisions we make as a nation and as individuals. The result of this is the emptiness and drudgery of the human ant hill, increased poverty and misery, and ever more violence in our cities and across the world, rather than the magnificent cultural flowering of Beauty, Wisdom, and Spirit, that was the dream of the American Founders. Poverty People go hungry in America. Children are homeless in America. Millions of Americans struggle for bare economic survival each day. Fortunately, Americans are a basically compassionate people. We do not let people suffer and starve without at least making some effort to help. Individuals often help those in need, but for a problem of this magnitude we need more than just the efforts and contributions of generous individuals. We need effective political and economic policies. No one begrudges welfare for the disabled, the elderly who are poor and alone, or mothers with young children who have no other means of support. But the issue that confronts the government when it seeks to alleviate poverty is this: How do we provide necessary help for people who need it, without perpetuating a culture of welfare for people who no longer need it. This question is of crucial importance because the American welfare system, as it stands today, is a potent cause of poverty -- as well as being a major cause of all the broken homes, fatherless children, suicides, health problems, drug trafficking, and violence, that virtually always accompany poverty. American society used to assume that poor people were ‘different’ than the rest of us, that poverty was somehow a natural and unavoidable condition for certain predisposed persons: blacks, for instance, or Indians, or immigrants. Poverty, broken homes, violence, etc., were thought of as unfortunately inevitable for such people. As society became more enlightened, however, these ideas eventually became politically incorrect, so we searched for new reasons to explain why these people were poor. One major excuse, grounded in our egalitarian principles, was that black people’s psyches had been so damaged by slavery and discrimination that they really could not help themselves -- which is as much as to say that even though they were not born ‘inferior’, now they are. So the government is obligated to step in with welfare and other programs (which is only fair because the rest of us are guilty). And so began the degrading habit of treating poor people in general, and black people in particular, like children, incapable of taking care of themselves. And yet, when white middle-class people are ravaged by economic catastrophes like sudden job loss, they often resort to drink and drugs, violence and depression, and their children are often neglected and end up in trouble of their own. Divorce, the death of a loved one, and other family catastrophes, often initiate the same chain of events. It does not matter what color one’s skin happens to be or where one’s ancestors came from. The rich and the poor are not different species, and the only way today’s poor will rise to a higher standard of economic life is by the same means that yesterday’s poor did the same thing: not by being degraded and emasculated by government coddling, but by working hard. Giving Blacks, Hispanics or anyone else, the incessant cultural message that they cannot ‘make it’ in America without extra help and unearned entitlements only perpetuates poverty. Poor groups of people in America, usually newly-arrived immigrants, have always ‘made it’. Yes, the history of black Americans is clearly, and horrifyingly, different. But black people are no different than these other people. And the many (and growing) numbers of black success stories invariably show that African Americans can rise out of poverty by the same means as everyone else. Typically, one generation works exceedingly hard, allowing the next generation to get an excellent education, and fairly quickly the entire group moves up the economic ladder. It is often noted that the gap between the rich and the poor is growing. From 1977 to 1993, for example, the wealth of the top 1% of American families grew 78% and they owned 40% of the nation’s wealth. By 1995, according to Robert Reich, they owned 47%. On the other hand, according to the Census Bureau the bottom 20% of American families in 1970 received 5.4% of the national income. By 1994 this had dropped to only 4.2%. This is apparently an unprecedented redistribution of wealth in favor of the rich, which MIT economist Paul Krugman refers to as a “spiral of inequality”. But these figures can be deceptive because many of the ‘poor’ are rising up the economic ladder and increasing the numbers of the ‘rich’. Then new people enter the country, typically replenishing the ranks of the ‘poor’ (but only temporarily). The assertion of a widening gap would be far more meaningful if these groups were static if the poor were condemned to eternal poverty and membership in the ranks of the ‘rich’ was eternally closed. But this is not the case (though, as we shall see, current welfare policies do slow down the normal upward progression for many people). If these two groups were fixed and changeless it would make sense, both ethically and economically, to take some of the rich people’s money and redistribute it to the poor. But since poor people can and do ‘make it’ on their own, this makes no sense at all. On the contrary, it simply serves to dissuade people from working hard. From the point of view of someone who is currently poor, why bother working when money is to be had for free? From the point of view of someone who is rich, why bother working when the earnings will just be taken away? Most people tend to be charitable when asked, but it is only natural to resent it when one is forced to turn over the fruits of one’s labors. If, instead, we truly encouraged and allowed ambitious people to succeed economically and enjoy the rewards, more wealth and more jobs and more opportunities would be created for everyone, and more of the currently- poor would use their intelligence and talent to create more wealth for themselves and others. But in the current welfare system, despite all its good intentions, everyone just loses. So if hard work is the way out of poverty, and this is not a secret, why are so many poor people in contemporary America having such difficulty moving up the ladder? It is not because poor people are inferior. It is not because of discrimination. And the poor who remain poor do not stagnate in this condition because of any sort of moral weakness. They remain poor because they are paid to do so. Various studies (as well as obvious common sense) demonstrate that married fathers, on average, spurred by the need to take care of their families, work more and earn more than single men. Studies also show that these men, on average, work more and earn more than working mothers. Relatively few mothers of small children make jobs their top priority. But if a mother is taking primary responsibility for the children, fathers typically can and do make jobs a top priority -- for exactly the same reason that mothers don’t: i.e., to take care of their children. And this indicates that a key to eliminating poverty is to encourage strong ties between men and their families. But due to a tragically misplaced ‘compassion’, governmental anti-poverty programs demoralize men, encouraging a state of affairs in which fathers recognize with horror that their families are better off without them! A mother raising young children by herself is eligible for a bonanza of government benefits that are taken away if an able-bodied husband is in the home. So off he goes, feeling hurt and angry and aggressive, seeking once again the pleasures of drinking, fighting, and promiscuous sex that he gave up when he got married. Soon he fathers yet more children that he won’t take care of. His daughters grow up seeing that husbands and fathers are expendable, though having babies brings them free money. His sons grow up without a father to teach them what being a man really means -- so they try to learn these things, wrongly of course, from equally immature friends who gather in the streets. Eventually the government -- always looking for a band-aid instead of curing the problem -- goes after these men and demands Child Support. But few men are willing to keep paying for the care of children they never see, who are being raised by a mother who is most often living with another man. So they find jobs that pay under the table, or disappear altogether, and sponge off other women who collect welfare. As long as the wages of employment are not as valuable as the seductive combination of welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, and the enjoyable leisure time that these bestow, the problem of a hopeless dead-end welfare culture will not be corrected. Going after dead-beat Dads (fruitless), prosecuting outright welfare fraud (which is actually a relatively rare occurrence), and insisting that mothers leave their children at government- sponsored daycare facilities while they are herded into artificial ‘work-fare’ programs, are all just illusions of reform and utter wastes of time. Most people who initially enter the welfare system have had legitimate catastrophes -- sudden job loss, devastating accidents or illnesses, death of a bread-winner. The goal of the system should be to help them out as much as needed (without burdening them with piles of paperwork and ‘waiting-times’ precisely when aid is most necessary), and then help them get off the rolls and back into a safe, satisfying, successful life. But if the system treats temporary problems as if they were permanent problems, the likelihood is that this will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The way to alleviate poverty is to make life without welfare more alluring than life with it. This would mean: • Slowly but steadily lowering the value of welfare payments (at least by not having them ‘keep up with inflation’), but not so fast as to suddenly dump unprepared catastrophe victims into an untenable situation: • Encouraging entrepreneurship and business growth through tax incentives and a reasonable lessening of unnecessarily stifling bureaucracy; • Replacing Medicaid with National Health Insurance, so that workers starting out in low-paying jobs, and entrepreneurs starting a new business, do not have to give up their ambitions in order to provide health coverage for themselves and their families; • Finding multiple ways -- in the media, in governmental policy decisions (especially in welfare regulations), and in the education system -- to encourage families to stay together and to have respect for both fathers and mothers; • Including ‘Child Allowances’ in the tax system for all children, not just fatherless children on welfare. There is one more step as well. Work has to include a vision, a meaning, beyond itself. It cannot be viewed as mere drudgery, a necessary-but-hateful way to barely subsist while making corporations and their investors rich. Human beings are three-fold creatures. The foundation of our worldly life is work and money. Without these, material instability and suffering spoil all other aspects of life. At the apex of our life is our relationship to that which is higher and more important than ourselves -- this generally takes the form of faith and religiosity. Binding and connecting this all together is the central portion of our lives, the love of family and friends. None of this can be neglected without harming the entire human being: without destroying all the pleasure, all the fulfillment, all the meaning of life. |
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