What Are People For? A Mandatory Question in Today's America

Brad Listi, a contributing writer to the Huffington Post asks a clever question today: What Do We Call the current Financial Crisis? After all, most historical events don't get named until after they happen: The World Wars, the Great Depression. He's actually come up with some good names for what's going on today:

The Not-So-Great Depression, The Greed Depression, Americorpse, The Boomer Bust, and there are others! This is good stuff. But I believe there is a deeper question to ask. It will determine if we come out of this "depression." What Are People For?

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the First stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted it misses progress by failing in constructiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.”

George Santayana, The Live of Reason, Volume 1, 1905″

More grim news filled the headlines this last week. The most disturbing revelations had to do with the loss of 2.6 million American jobs in 2008. According to most analysts, this is the worst drop since 1945. Here in the Northwest, Boeing Company announced that it will eliminate 4500 local positions in the Seattle Area. Closer to home, I’ve reported (on this blog) that the housing market in my town, Kenmore, has been in decline and that many homeowners are defaulting on their mortgages. Closer still: several of my colleagues are in the process of losing their homes or filing for bankruptcy.

Indeed, America has faced difficulty in the past, but we are in the midst of a financial/cultural shift that will, I believe, determine the strength and survival of the American way of life. It’s clear that we need to transform our fundamental way of conducting business, the way we regard each other and the way we view our position in the world. If we do not ask the right questions or ignore the facts we are destined for failure. Will history repeat itself?

WENDELL BERRY - WHAT ARE PEOPLE FOR?

Wendell Berry is arguably one of the most profound and prolific American writers about the marginalization of American farm life, local sustainability and preservation of THE LAND itself. In his brief 3-page essay from 1985 entitled “What Are People For?” he captures brilliantly the ethos of that time in American history when a way of life, the American small farmer, was being replaced by computerization, mechanization and automation. It’s interesting to note that the 1980’s were a time when corporate America was given license to shed employees and become more efficient in the name of “free market capitalism.” As Berry writes:

“Today, with hundreds of farm families losing their farms every week, the economists are still saying, as they have said all along, that these people deserve to fail, that they have failed because they are the ‘least efficient producers,’ and that the rest of us are better off for their failure.”

Lately, I have noticed a lot of finger-pointing about who is to blame for the financial/housing crisis that is causing job loss, home foreclosures and broken families. It’s human nature to place blame and seek justice. Sure, I get that. What so disturbs me is our tendency, as Americans, to condemn our neighbors for not taking “personal responsibility” for their actions. I believe we have all been hypnotized by a belief that the free market is the answer, that serving corporate interests is the goal. I also believe we all need to take time and reflect on what Wendell Berry so elegantly states:

“The great question that hovers over this issue, one that we have dealt with mainly by indifference, is the question of what are people for. Is their greatest dignity in unemployment? Is the obsolescence of human beings our social goal?”

I sincerely hope that the policy changes and stimulus packages of the next administration are EMBRACED by Americans. It’s going to take everyone, working together for a common cause to transform our economy and put Americans back to work. So, the next time you find yourself judging someone who is blue-collar or your neighbor who is having financial problems, ask yourself if we are all merely functionaries designed for the purposes of lining the pockets of our corporate superiors or are we something else. I think you know the answer!