Volume 7, Issue 4, February 1998

THE AGE OF THE SUPER-SYMBOLIC ECONOMY

The collective beliefs that make up attitudes are often sheer mythology

Neo-conservatism has been successful among us today in forcing many to believe in broad concepts, slogans and generalizations, which add up to a licence for greed and social irresponsibility. Not least of these is that our economy must be controlled by the marketplace. So far all the marketplace has done is cause us to be subject to the whims of the stock markets and to be down-graded to the lowest common denominator of working conditions as found in the second-world countries.

Neo-conservative ideologues hold out the guarantee of divine knowledge and the promise of the kingdom to come. Their experiment in market leadership is bringing a shrinking in our economic values and a lowering of our standard of living. Its success is in making the rich wealthier and the poor poorer.

This influence tends to move people away from being active contributers to a caring society towards individual self-interest. Consider the following excerpt from the novel, "The Lawyer's Tale," by D. Kincaid, Berkley Books, New York, 1992, page 136:

The story tells of a wealthy and influential lawyer who used his power to have his wife who was stricken with cancer placed ahead of a line of others for treatment in an American hospital. Feeling guilty the man mentioned it to his daughter who scolded him and replied, "this is an example of the free market working at its best. What you call 'clout' is just one of the rewards, the perks for what you contribute to society. Instead of the government deciding those rewards, the market itself determines them. If society didn't value your contribution highly, you wouldn't have 'clout'. A poor labourer can't get his wife into the TNF program because what he contributes to society doesn't command that kind of reward in the marketplace. It doesn't make him a bad man or our society a bad society. It just means his contribution, valued in a free market, is not considered as significant as yours. And, Dad, if you're going to have this system, with all its obvious benefits, you can't quarrel with the marketplace. It's the only objective test. You passed. A hundred thousand others didn't. Don't fight it. Be proud, you've earned it."

John Ralston Saul in his latestbook, "Reflections of a Siamese Twin," Viking Press, 1997, states on page 490: "There will always be, in any elite, a percentage driven only by self-interest. Now it seems that that relatively small percentage has infected the thinking of the elite in general, no matter how intelligent many individuals may be or how devoted to their particular role. Much of the problem lies in the conversion of our public sector from an ethic, centred on the strengthening of the public good to an abstract managerial religion.

That in turn has facilitated the massive penetration of the public sector by business interests."

Saul speaks "of a new, strong mythological simplicity - the economy." He goes on to say, "Suddenly people with responsibilities are saying globalization, the way they used to say homeland and heaven. The marketplace is evoked with the tones of racial purity. They sing the praises of competition - of their forceful ability to compete - the way they once sang those of their old nationalist military vocabulary.

Glory and courage are their stock-in-trade. Each of them is tougher and smarter than the other. Heads of government now cheer on traders the way they once cheered on generals. The practical impact is just as mixed. At least it is a less bloody form of self-indulgence. But it is still built on mythological simplicity, not on the complexities of reality, that is, of society." (Ibid, page 225).

John Ibbitson, in his new book, "Promised Land," concludes, "Unquestionably, however, the Common Sense Revolution has affected the civil discourse of Canada's most populous province. A society that governed itself by seeking to accommodate conflicting interests has been transformed into one where interests hurl themselves against each other until the more powerful prevails. Such a confrontational method has made possible enormous changes that, in many cases, were arguably long overdue. It has left the citizenry raw and bruised and surly towards one another. And there is no end in sight to the prevailing public distemper."(Page 285).

The most pernicious thing about self-centredness is that it is insatiable. Even when ones incessant demands have been temporarily met, one is still afraid they don't have enough. There can be no rhyme or reason to ones wants and needs.

When we are selfish we close off the channels of exchange with others. We ignore the needy on welfare by conceiving them as victims of their own laziness, or their low status because of lack of education and knowledge.

Not only do those of who have grab and hold all the wealth and attention they can get, but they more easily deny others the possibility of sharing with us in the benefits.

Canada has been a country which has offered great equality of opportunity for all. It has possessed a political tradition that was neither entirely libertarian nor entirely socialist, but rested on an indispensible partnership between government and the private sector, and on direct action by the state to protect the weak from the strong, the disadvantaged from the well-heeled.

If Jesus stood today amid our contemporary life, with the outlook on the condition of all humanity which observation, travel, television, and the media would spread before him, and with the same heart of divine humanity beating in him, would he not create a new discipleship to meet the new needs in a new harvest-time of history?

Search Articles by Keyword

 


Back to Issue Summary || Issue Index || Home

"Religion NOW" is published in limited edition by the Rev. Ross E. Readhead, B.A., B.D., Certificate of Corrections, McMaster University, in the interest of furthering knowledge and participation in religion. Dialogue is invited and welcomed.