"We Should All Be Nicer"

Lots of Twitter fodder today about Trump's fourth (actually, fifth; Kyle Cheney is right, the superceding indictment in SDFL counts) indictment.  But frankly, I'm more interested in this:

Brueggemann:  I think that the consumer economy is our participation in an unsustainable standard of living.  And the reason that we have to have such an incredibly strong military is to protect an unsustainable standard of living.  If we didn't have to be managing and manipulating the world economy through globalism, which we have to do to sustain the way we're living, the way some of us are living, we wouldn't need to spend ourselves into oblivion for the military.  

Does that make sense?  That's what I think.

And I think our moral capacity to live that way is grounded in the theological notion of American exceptionalism.  "We are, in fact, God's chosen People so we are entitled to live this way at the expense of many other People."  

That's what I think.  And that's what makes it so hard.  Who wants not to do that "when it's so terrific?"  That's what I think.  We wouldn't have had that scary article about inequality if we were not propelled by greed that is grounded in our fear of running out and being scarce.  So it's an endless proposition in which most of us continue to go through the motions.  And the longer that we participate in this unsustainable scheme the less we stay in touch with the humanity of our neighbors.  Because all of our neighbors turn into rivals and competitors and threats.  So Donald Trump, for example,   has this long list of neighbors who he perceives as threats.  And it turns out that's a winning way to label People and then you don't have to be neighborly.  

There's a lot of this going around: 

The most important story about why Americans have become sad and alienated and rude, I believe, is also the simplest: We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration. https://t.co/HzHsAvfdBo

— David Brooks (@nytdavidbrooks) August 14, 2023

David Brooks, as usual, hasn't a clue. This idea goes back at least to Bowling Alone. But you can identify it in American literature at the turn of the 20th century, or in the poetry of the American-in-exile, T.S. Eliot:

What life have you if you have not life together?

There is no life that is not in community,

And no community not lived in praise of God.

Even the anchorite who meditates alone,

For whom the days and nights repeat the praise of God,

Prays for the Church, the Body of Christ incarnate.

And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,

And no man knows or cares who is his neighbour

Unless his neighbour makes too much disturbance,

But all dash to and fro in motor cars,

Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.

Nor does the family even move about together

But every son would have his motor cycle,

And daughters ride away on casual pillions. 

Eliot was identifying the wrong causes, too (i.e., new technology), and the wrong problems.  I submit the answer goes deeper, and Brueggemann is closer to putting his finger on it than Brooks, or Putnam, or Eliot. Living a false life that depends on not being "neighborly" has its spiritual, if not material, cost.  But what does it profit you to gain the world, but lose your own soul?

Aye, there's the rub.