A career counselor told me last week that taking only one class a semester isn't enough. To show that I've got enough get-up-and-go I apparently need to be taking two classes on top of working full-time which didn't make much sense to me until I read an essay in Wayne Muller's Sabbath (text follows my thoughts on the subject).
I was struck by his description of desired human impulses under the gospel of mass consumption: "grasping, consumption, and desire". This is almost a word-for-word description of Mr. Scrooge before is epiphany. The ideal person in a consumer age does not help neighbors, does not reach out to support the community, and does not live gently on this world, but greedily and selfishly claws to the top of the pile shouting "to hell with all of you. I've got mine."
And perhaps that metaphor took me away from my point. I'm trying to say that under the consumer worldview we're expected to be busy, busy, busy ... so busy that we don't have time to realize we have more than we need. As the economy turns, which it seems to be doing, more and more of us are busy but barely getting by and that's a shame. I wish I knew how to fix it, but I'm busy barely getting by.
The text comes from Wayne Muller's Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in our Busy Lives:
Writing in the mid-1920's, during a time of great economic expansion, industrialist Walter Henderson Grimes lamented that it was "perfectly clear that the middle-class American already busy more than he needs." Grimes was sounding an alarm: he foresaw that the American citizen (not yet a "consumer"), with a long, proud history of self-sufficiency and support from family and neighbors, was in danger of becoming satisfied. Soon, men and women, having worked hard and long ... would realize they had just about all they really needed. They would realize that they could now rest together, happy and satisfied with their good and peaceful lives. .Horrified at this prospect, Grimes cautioned that "unless we have a greater outlet for our goods .. as manufacturing efficiency increases, there will be larger groups with too much leisure."
Leisure, of course, does not produce economic expansion. And so economic cheerleaders ... called for ... the "new economic gospel of consumption." But this new "gospel of consumption" met with some resistance, as most workers did not seem to desire new goods and services -- automobiles, appliances, and amusements -- as spontaneously as they did the old ones -- food, clothing, and shelter. And so, it took the dedicated efforts of investors, marketing experts, advertisers, and business leaders -- as well as the conspicuous and widely publicized spending examples set by the rich -- to fuel the drive to increased consumption.
With this strategic shift, the business community broke its historical concentration on increasing production -- whereby great technologies would free men and women from the sweat and toil of their labors -- and replaced it with a completely new and improved vision of progress: the Gospel of Mass Consumption. ...
Thus, intentionally or not, the free marketplace canonized grasping, consumption, and desire as the essential human impulses that would drive the machine of civilization.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
