Redefining Wealth

Redefining Wealth
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BLOSSOMS

BLOSSOMS

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Fritjof Cappra, author of The Tao of Physics, began with his friends. Wanting to start an institute he called it Elmwood, the name of his neighborhood in the East Bay. Then each of his friends brought in some of their friends. I had the honor of being nominated by Chellis Glendinning, a leading “neo-Luddite,” as they were called. These people were not charmed by the practice of defining “progress” by whatever engineers could create and corporations could produce and market. They thought that things should be judged by their effects on society, not by whatever it was possible to make and sell.

It is fair to say the institute was sensitive to ecology, to progressive economics, and to all cultures, not only to white Americans. An extreme form of the general orientation is suggested by a phone call from Glendinning, who told me the good news the she had finished a book. It was a critique of Western culture in the form of a sort of parody of the ten-step program pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous.

“Fine,” I replied as joke, “you can call it, ‘my name is Chellis and I’m in recovery from Western civilization’.” This of course echoed the way recovering alcoholics introduce themselves at AA meetings. She had the wit to adopt the jest as her title, as Quakers had accepted the nickname given to the Society of Friends. Shambhala published that book in 1994.

I was friends not only with Chellis, but also with Ernest (Chick) Callenbach, the author of Ecotopia (published in 1975) and Ecotopia Emerging (1981). I used to stop hy Callenbach’s Berkeley house and walk to lunch at an Indian restaurant. He worked for the University of California Press, specializing in films, a natural for him after time in the Paris of the nouvelle vague.

At the time I was inducted, the Elmwood Institute had a periodic newsletter. It would be a simple move to convert this into a quarterly publication, and expand it. As an experienced editor, I was happy to volunteer. Only an idiot could have failed, given the talent within the institute, starting with the founder.

In that initial year, 1992, we did issues on:

  • Redefining Wealth
  • Thinking About Population
  • Setting a Course for Ecoliteracy
  • Going Deeper into Ecology

Here is the introduction to the first issue, still glowingly relevant today:

“Let Lovers of Gaia recall, as the ancient Greeks did, how the goddess of this name gave birth toZeus. Hid from his murderous father, the baby was nursed with milk from a goat. One of the goat’s horns, broken off, became the first cornucopia, yielding whatever nourishment its possessor desired, including ambrosia (the food of the gods).

“American art has generally depicted the cornucopia as spilling forth abundant fruits and vegetables and amber waves of grain—a satisfying glyph for those whom historian David Potter called then ‘people of plenty.’ In a similar spirit, political candidates have long promised us an ever-rising ‘standard of living.’ In 1952, for example, Eisenhower pledged not only an end to the Korean war, btu also ‘progress and prosperity.’

“In the past 20n years [since 1972, that is], our affluent identity has been threatened by oil shocks, income stagnation, and the relative economic rise of Japan and Europe. Some observers would say that our national response so far has been (a) to go on boasting that we’re the greatest, (b) to celebrate small government while borrowing massively and hoisting a bigger military stick, and (c) to shift 60% of the new wealth to 1% of the population—presumably an encouraging symbol, of anyone’s chance to get rich...”

Note: This was written exactly a quarter century ago. It is a summary of the program now espoused by President Trump..

To continue: “Asked to name a system suffused with propaganda and committed to taking over the world, most Americans would think of pre-Gorbachev communism. But in another sense this description applies to advanced industrial society. The propaganda tells us to consume what the system profits by producing, an to pay for it by working at the kinds of jobs that the system makes available…

“Nonetheless, several developments now encourage us to question the value of consumerism. People are again wondering: Despite the success of our economic cornucopia, is it failing to yield some of the most essential goods, service, and social arrangements? What about a sense of community—at which boutique is that being sold? What about ‘quality time’? At which discount warehouse can you get a good deal on friendship? What about ‘safe streets’?

“People wonder: is it enough to assert that ‘he who dies with the most toys wins’? Surely Tibetan Buddhist would regard this slogan as the rampage of ‘hungry ghosts’—spirits who are eternally dissatisfied, trapped in a cycle of desire and false fulfillment.

“Defining wealth as the ability to buy things, we have largely lost the sense of ‘weal’—which means well-being (as in the word ‘commonweal’). To most people, wealth now refers less to shared well-being than ‘gross national product’ or ‘personal net worth.’

”Questions are being raised by Elmwood people and many others not only about whether we are getting what we need, but also about whether we can go on producing in the ways we do. Are there environmental limits to our present type of economic growth? If a certain pattern of economic activity has the “side-effect” of fouling earth, air, and water, or altering global climate in ominous ways, how do we assess the wealth thus crested? With regard to greenhouse gases, are we involve in a replay of the tobacco fiasco, when companies argued for decades that “no conclusive evidence” proved a link between smoking and disease?

“How much risk are we willing to take to keep using fossil fuels in a profligate way? When President Carter wore a sweater and urged energy efficiency, he was accused by Reagan of wanting us to shiver in the cold and dark. Is it wealth to be able to waste energy? Is it wealth to get certain things only at the cost of future generations?

“Sometimes I ask people what would happen if the U.S., in some unhappy circumstance, had to cut consumption. In this thought experiment, I find that most people are somewhat disturbed by imagining a 10% cut, disoriented by 25%, and utterly horrified by 50%. Wouldn't society collapse? In generational terms, however, it was not so long ago that we were actually living at each of these lower levels of consumption. And for most of the world, having half as much per capita as Americans do now, would feel like paradise.

“What are the values that animate our lives apart from being rich? What do we stand for besides standing at the cornucopia’s outlet?...

“While an enterprising people are developing a rich continent, and again when they gain a source of cheap petroleum from overseas, the economy can seem to be a cornucopia, magically producing more and more goods while we happily ignore ‘side effects.’ Now, like a tar baby, these side effects are adhering to us, no matter how hard we try to shake them off. Wee are stuck with looking at the system as a whole.

“In terms of Greek mythology, we are starting to learn that in the shadow of the cornucopia lurks Gaia’s murderous husband, Chronos…”

A final note: So much for what was already obvious 25 years ago. It was wildly optimistic to write as if the system might correct itself . Instead, words such as “climate change” are now being discouraged in documents of the Environmental Protection Agency.

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