The global capitalist=consumerist economy has an entire
faith system, which has its own hierarchy, its own institutions, its own marble
palaces. It has its own mythology, doctrine of the creation, doctrine of the Fall,
doctrine of redemption, even a kind of eschatology, where history is going
where it ought to be going – all interpreted and presented in terms of a
consumer capitalist economy. It has its own heretics, its own schisms. It
encourages us to trust in the god of the system: to trust, even though the god
of the economic system doesn’t seem to know what he is doing at times, when
things go very wrong. But we are still supposed to trust that in the long run
the wisdom of this market god will make things right. There is an old American
religious song called “Farther along we will understand why.” There may be a
mystery now that the trickle-down theory of economics is not reaching everyone,
as Pope Francis reminds us, but if we only wait, if we are only patient, in the
long run the market knows best. In other words, to use a term taken directly
from theology, the market is omniscient.
It may not appear omniscient, but it certainly claims to be.
So we must have confidence that it is omniscient. So I am talking about an entire
symbol system here, of myths and stories and narratives, that are parallel to
but very different from those of traditional religions such as Christianity or
Judaism or Islam – very different and in some ways contradictory.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
In a nutshell
The global capitalist=consumerist economy has an entire faith system, which has its own hierarchy, its own institutions, its own marble palaces. It has its own mythology, doctrine of the creation, doctrine of the Fall, doctrine of redemption, even a kind of eschatology, where history is going where it ought to be going – all interpreted and presented in terms of a consumer capitalist economy. It has its own heretics, its own schisms. It encourages us to trust in the god of the system: to trust, even though the god of the economic system doesn’t seem to know what he is doing at times, when things go very wrong. But we are still supposed to trust that in the long run the wisdom of this market god will make things right. There is an old American religious song called “Farther along we will understand why.” There may be a mystery now that the trickle-down theory of economics is not reaching everyone, as Pope Francis reminds us, but if we only wait, if we are only patient, in the long run the market knows best. In other words, to use a term taken directly from theology, the market is omniscient.
It may not appear omniscient, but it certainly claims to be. So we must have confidence that it is omniscient. So I am talking about an entire symbol system here, of myths and stories and narratives, that are parallel to but very different from those of traditional religions such as Christianity or Judaism or Islam – very different and in some ways contradictory.