It took the best part of a week for the Occupy Wall Street protests to make the news in a serious way, but by then the story had gone across the world on social networking sites anyway. All this just added fuel to the flame - to the sense of them and us. And to the fact that the world has changed: now grass roots movements have their own ways of being heard, whether reported on or not.
The global economic crisis has begun to be felt in the affluent West. For a long time we've been aware that our economics are implicated in all kinds of issues of global poverty and injustice, but now there are lost jobs, pension cuts, inflation and property repossession on our own soil. And so, the structures of late capitalism are finally forced to account. Can we afford to have unregulated banks anymore? Does a totally free market work? Is the distribution of wealth fair? Were the dice loaded all along? Should we all be learning Chinese? And if the current structure were to collapse, what might we have instead?
My issues with late capitalism are certainly to do with material injustice, but more acutely they are about the pseudo-religion that late capitalism has created, to justify and sustain itself: the faith which says that freedom is essentially all about self-interest, and which deifies the self as the highest value... the highest truth. This is the anti-gospel, the direct opposite of Jesus' insistence (Mark 8:34).
Ever since I was a young child, advertisers have told me that the most important thing is my own happiness. They taught me that it's my job to rearrange the world to my own convenience, and that other people are to be seen as competition, or fair game. I have been indoctrinated in late capitalism's faith of self.
It's a very appealing spirituality because it sounds like it's on my side, like it's about me. But all it really does is produce nations of devoted and obedient consumers, whose job is to keep spending, and thus to maintain the power structures that we're now protesting against. The religion of self is not about freedom for everybody, it's about the subjugation of everybody to that 1% with the loudest voices.
The social and spiritual issues that grow out of this faith are the saddest things that I've witnessed in my own time. Self interest doesn't make for fulfilled individuals. Self-interest doesn't foster strong and loving relationships. Self-interest doesn't raise happy and empowered children. Self-interest doesn't create vibrant community. The dogmas of late capitalism have reduced its peoples to markets and left them alienated, passive, dehumanised and lost.
Right now the protests are continuing all over the world against the oppressions of this economic order, and I hope we see real change. But if late capitalism is allowed to leave behind its pseudo spirituality of self-interest, then we should beware of whatever comes next.
...For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. (James 3:16)
The global economic crisis has begun to be felt in the affluent West. For a long time we've been aware that our economics are implicated in all kinds of issues of global poverty and injustice, but now there are lost jobs, pension cuts, inflation and property repossession on our own soil. And so, the structures of late capitalism are finally forced to account. Can we afford to have unregulated banks anymore? Does a totally free market work? Is the distribution of wealth fair? Were the dice loaded all along? Should we all be learning Chinese? And if the current structure were to collapse, what might we have instead?
My issues with late capitalism are certainly to do with material injustice, but more acutely they are about the pseudo-religion that late capitalism has created, to justify and sustain itself: the faith which says that freedom is essentially all about self-interest, and which deifies the self as the highest value... the highest truth. This is the anti-gospel, the direct opposite of Jesus' insistence (Mark 8:34).
Ever since I was a young child, advertisers have told me that the most important thing is my own happiness. They taught me that it's my job to rearrange the world to my own convenience, and that other people are to be seen as competition, or fair game. I have been indoctrinated in late capitalism's faith of self.
It's a very appealing spirituality because it sounds like it's on my side, like it's about me. But all it really does is produce nations of devoted and obedient consumers, whose job is to keep spending, and thus to maintain the power structures that we're now protesting against. The religion of self is not about freedom for everybody, it's about the subjugation of everybody to that 1% with the loudest voices.
The social and spiritual issues that grow out of this faith are the saddest things that I've witnessed in my own time. Self interest doesn't make for fulfilled individuals. Self-interest doesn't foster strong and loving relationships. Self-interest doesn't raise happy and empowered children. Self-interest doesn't create vibrant community. The dogmas of late capitalism have reduced its peoples to markets and left them alienated, passive, dehumanised and lost.
Right now the protests are continuing all over the world against the oppressions of this economic order, and I hope we see real change. But if late capitalism is allowed to leave behind its pseudo spirituality of self-interest, then we should beware of whatever comes next.
...For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. (James 3:16)