Commonwealth
17/05/09 15:38 Filed in:
Democratic TheoryThis is one of my favorite essays on the kind of future we could all enjoy. As Obama navigates rough waters and attempts to steer the country in a new, sustainable, and more prosperous future Sanders’ essay came back to mind. For the most part, his vision is one I share.
Common Wealth
By Scott Russell Sanders
Let me tell you two stories, then invite you to decide which of them points toward the country where you'd rather live.
In one story, a man I'll call Sam wakes up in his luxurious condo. Hearing sirens tear through a nearby street, he fights off a feeling of panic by remembering the fences and guards protecting his place from the riffraff of the city. The windows are sealed shut, of course, because the air outside is foul with fumes, but Sam is comforted by the whirring of an air purifier in his bedroom.
In the kitchen, not trusting what flows from the tap, he drinks bottled water that his cash has brought here from France. He thinks with satisfaction of the way those numbers in his bank account make things appear and disappear, like magic. As he eats, the TV advises him what he can do with his money. He doesn't pay attention until a good ad comes on--like one for an exercise machine that will turn your body hard in fifteen minutes a day. He glances at the sports pages but ignores the rest of the newspaper, which is too depressing.
Instead, he reads the cereal box. On the back are instructions telling how he could win a Caribbean cruise for his family, but he can't imagine going anywhere with his ungrateful kids, even if his ex-wife would let them out of her clutches. He doesn't recognize most of the ingredients listed on the box, although he's sure they must have been scientifically approved. Finished eating, he leaves the dishes on the table as he left the towels in the shower and yesterday's clothes on the bedroom floor, for the maid to clean up.
Then Sam climbs into his SUV and pushes through morning traffic, the other cars making way for his bulky vehicle. On the drive, he calls his broker to discuss a few stock tips, calls his accountant to review an offshore tax shelter, calls his ex to argue over the kids' tuition. He lays on the horn when anyone fills the lane in front of him, and he gives no quarter to the few, harried pedestrians trying to cross the street.
As he walks from the parking garage, a sweat breaks out on his forehead. Already the day seems unseasonably hot, and Sam wonders for a moment about that global warming business. Entering the arctic cool of his office, however, he brushes the worries aside. The employees greet him, and he sees in their eyes admiration for the fit of his suit, the shape of his haircut, the authority in his stride.
His secretary has laid out the day's tasks on his desk. It will be a lot to get through before he leaves at 6:00 to see his shrink, but he'll manage; he always does. The trick is to make your decisions and not look back. Sam isn't sure how he'll fill the evening--maybe try out the new sushi bar. Before opening the first folder, he glances in a mirror to straighten his tie. The man gazing back at him is happy, secure, fulfilled, his life charged with meaning. It is a man blessed with everything that money can buy.
You see variations on that story every day on television and billboards, in magazines and malls, and you hear upbeat versions of it from pundits and politicians. Before I say anything more about it, let me tell you another story, one you rarely hear in public but one I suspect you know in your bones.
A man I'll call John wakes in the small house that he and his wife, Kate, have been slowly fixing up. Soon their daughter will start babbling in her crib. Their son is already awake, birds singing as he draws the curtains open. Through open windows John hears the calls of crickets and birds. Kate breathes peacefully beside him. A dog barks, a hammer rings, and from downtown comes the whistle of a train. Since the conversion to fuel cells and electric motors, the traffic hardly makes a sound, and the air smells of flowers instead of exhaust.
Because Kate was up late the night before rehearsing with the community band, John tiptoes from the bedroom. After a few minutes of meditation, he bows to the morning, and goes to take a shower. The water, heated by panels on the roof drains from the tub into an irrigation system in the yard, which is planted in wildflowers and prairie grasses. Like the garden, the light he shaves by is powered by the sun, from photoelectric shingles.
As he is drying off John hears his daughter's waking cry. While he changes her diaper, the two of them talk, John in a playful speech he learned from his own parents, the baby in a musical prattle. He is feeding her pureed carrots when Kate comes into the kitchen, smelling of shampoo. She kisses him, and they talk over plans for the day. She'll walk their son to school, then bicycle to her lab. He'll take the baby to daycare at the library, where she can play while he works a shift at the circulation desk. Since he's working half-time while the children are young, John can do the rest of his job by computer from home. On her way home, Kate will stop by the farmers' market to collect salad makings for a pitch-in supper with neighbors.
After the meal, if there's enough light, John and Kate and the children will tend their plot in the community garden, or they'll visit with Kate's parents and arrange for some weekend babysitting. After the children go to sleep, John and Kate may watch a documentary on PBS, or may crawl into bed early and read for an hour before sleep.
It will be a full day--but then all their days are full. As he pushes the baby in her stroller toward the library, John thinks of the riches they enjoy. The nation is at peace. The city is a humane and handsome place, with abundant green space, decent housing for everyone, and programs to serve the needs of children and the elderly. He and Kate work at secure and useful jobs. They share a snug house, with friends nearby and neighbors who look out for them.
Nearing the library, John takes a path through a prairie that occupies land reclaimed from a former oil depot beside the river. The river, once filthy, is now clean enough for swimming. As a member of the local land trust, John played a small role in restoring this place, and that work makes him proud. He is admiring the dance of leaves and light on the prairie when he notices the baby has grown still. Following her gaze, he sees a goldfinch bobbing on a coneflower. The bird lets loose a song, which makes the baby clap her hands and laugh, and John laughs with her.
Having heard both stories, you may think I've made the first one too dark, the second too bright. But if I've exaggerated the differences between these two views of the good life, it's only because we're being fed sugarcoated versions of the first story every waking hour, and we rarely taste the second story at all.
The dominant media in our society--including most television programs, films, magazines, Internet sites, and advertisements-tell us that happiness, meaning, and security are to be found through piling up money and buying things. Whatever troubles us, shopping can fix it; whatever hollowness we feel, shopping can fill it. A recent billboard for cigarettes used the slogan, "Get More Stuff," and that might serve as the motto for our entire commercial culture.
Our political culture delivers pretty much the same message--which isn't surprising, since the corporations that flood the media with their ads also fund political campaigns. After the September 11 attacks, when Americans longed to know how we could help our country, politicians told us to run up some debt on our charge cards. When Americans wondered how we could reduce our dependence on oil, and thus our entanglement with despotic regimes in the Middle East, our leaders told us to hit the roads and fill the airports. As we look around at this richest of nations and see public debt piling up, hospitals closing, schools failing, forests dying, prison populations swelling, farmland disappearing under subdivisions and malls, children going without medical care, and countless people sleeping on the streets, our leaders offer us a tax cut, so we'll have more money in our pockets. And 40 percent of those cuts will go to the richest 1 percent of Americans, who already have more money in their pockets than they know what to do with.
For the past two decades, U.S. politics has been dominated by efforts to ransack the commons, increasing the wealth of a few at the expense of the many. This plundering might take the form of clear-cutting in national forests, drilling in wildlife refuges, grazing on public lands at below market costs, tax subsidies for the nuclear industry and agribusiness, pork barrel highway projects, industrial pollution of air and water and soil. The looting of the commons has been carried out through the privatizing of prisons, the use of tax dollars for religious schools, the commercial rip-off of the airwaves and the Internet, the scouring of the oceans by factory ships, the draining of aquifers for development, the opening of parks to snowmobiles, the patenting of organisms, the elimination of the estate tax, and so on. The net result of all this plundering is to diminish the wealth we hold in common.
Our politicians, manufacturers, and merchants seem not to notice that we hold any wealth in common. The story they tell is almost entirely about private wealth and private solutions. If the streets are unsafe, instead of reducing the poverty that causes crime, buy an alarm system, move into a gated community, pack a gun. If the public schools are failing, instead of fixing them, put your kids in private schools. If the water is tainted, don't work to end pollution; buy your own supply in bottles. If the roads are clogged, don't push for public transportation; buy a bigger car. If cancer is epidemic, instead of addressing the causes, try the latest therapies. If Social Security looks insecure, instead of overhauling the system to safeguard everyone, funnel the dollars into private accounts, so those who guess right on the market will win and those who guess wrong will lose.
A week before the September 11 anniversary, a two-page ad in the New York Times for a cell phone service used the slogan, "Get More," and then listed two dozen things you would get more of by purchasing this product, including more laughs, more party invites, and more second glances; with this phone you'd also get more friendly, available, motivated, and involved; you'd get more time with your kids, more of what you want, "more and more and more." Those claims are almost entirely false, of course, and we could laugh them off if they weren't beamed at us, on behalf of one product or another, through every channel of communication, twenty-four hours a day.
Viewed against this background, my opening story about Sam, though plenty dark, should not seem exaggerated. Sam is the ideal consumer, the unbridled ego wooed by all the ads. He thinks only about himself-his appearance, pleasure, and power. He feels no gratitude to the countless people, living and dead, whose labors support him. He is scarcely aware that he lives on a planet along with millions of other species, nor that he draws every drop of his existence from the wellspring of Nature. He looks no deeper for meaning than his own cravings. While the world decays around him, he tries to buy his way to happiness and health, as if he could withdraw inside a cocoon of money. Sam's story is dark because it is demented, a self-centered fantasy that leads to loneliness for the individual and disaster for the world.
By contrast, my story about John may sound too good to be true, yet nothing in his life is beyond our reach. He measures his wealth by the well-being of his family, friends, and neighbors. He understands that his own health and the health of everyone he loves depends on the health of his community, its air and water, its parks and schools, its councils and courts. He sees himself as belonging not merely to a city but to a watershed, a bioregion, and ultimately to the Earth. Rather than defining himself as a consumer, he seeks to be a conserver. Rather than chasing after fashion, he savors everyday gifts. He finds joy in the voice of a child or a bird, in music and books, in gardening and strolling, in sharing food and talk. He finds meaning in caring for other people and for his place. It's clear that many of John's fellow citizens embrace this vision, for their city is infused with a spirit of cooperation, compassion, and ecological wisdom. To live in such a way, people need not be saints nor sages; they need simply be awake to the real sources of the good life.
I'm guessing that everyone reading these lines has at least glimpsed this vision--which is why I suspect you know John's story in your bones. You've dreamed of living in a household and a neighborhood suffused with love and respect. You've dreamed of living in a community that is just, beautiful, harmonious, and durable, a community that values all its citizens, that makes room for other species, that draws energy from wind and sun, that meets many of its own needs from local sources, that nourishes learning and the arts, and that protects these blessings for future generations. You've dreamed of belonging to a nation of such communities, and to a world of such nations.
The work of creating wise and loving communities begins with cherishing our common wealth. I speak of it as "common" because it's ordinary and because it's shared. By "wealth" I don't mean money, but the actual sources of well-being. I mean the soils, waters, and atmosphere; the oceans and prairies and forests; the human gene pool and the plenitude of species. I mean language in all its forms, including mathematics and music; every kind of knowledge, from folklore to physics; and all manner of artifacts, from satellites to shoes. I mean the practical arts such as cooking, building, herding, and farming; the art of medicine; the traditions of civil liberty and democratic government. I mean wildlife refuges, national parks, and wilderness areas, as well as museums, libraries, and other public spaces.
You won't see these treasures for sale in the mall. You won't see them advertised on TV. You won't discover them in corporate balance sheets or the Gross National Product. You'll rarely hear them spoken of with pride by politicians, who seem hell-bent on auctioning off everything that might have the word "public" attached to it.
Where you're likely to hear people talking about our common wealth is at a block party, a union meeting, a street festival, a concert in the park. You're likely to hear such talk among people cleaning up a river, planting trees on a ravaged hillside, reclaiming an abandoned rail yard for a playground, turning a trash-filled lot into a community garden. In short, you'll hear testimony to our shared wealth wherever people come together to preserve, restore, or create something for the good of the community, and not merely for their own private advantage.
What's being sold to us every day as the "American way of life' is mostly a cheat and a lie. It's an infantile dream of endless consumption, endless novelty, and endless i play. It's a pacifier for the ego to suck on. It's bad for us and bad for the Earth.
We need a new vision of the good life. We need a dream worthy of grown-ups, one that values simplicity over novelty, conservation over consumption, harmony over competition, community over ego.
Fortunately, many people sense this need. Across our country and around the world, people are shaping a new story about the sources of peace and plenty. You can see the story come alive in farmers' markets, Habitat for Humanity building sites, food coops, town theaters, land trusts. You can witness the story unfolding in citizen forums and simple living collectives, in hospices, in shelters for abused women and children, in efforts to restore eagles or wolves. Those who are acting out this new story are recovering wisdom known to our ancestors but largely forgotten in our hectic, narcissistic age.
Love of our common wealth is the root impulse behind the countless acts of gratitude and kindness that ordinary people perform every day. We all feel it, but we don't always know how to speak of it, or we speak of it so quietly that our story is drowned out by the blare of consumerism.
We need to speak up, to say boldly why we fight for good schools, why we build houses for the homeless, why we protect open space, why we look after the ailing and the elderly, why we pay taxes without grumbling, why we honor government as a defender of the common wealth. In a culture drunk on private greed, we need to declare why we're committed to the public good. In a society obsessed with competition, we need to say why we practice cooperation. In a culture addicted to instant gratification, we need to champion longterm-healing and the welfare of future generations.
Again, I'm not saying that such ways of thinking and acting mean we're paragons of virtue; they only mean we're awake to the sources of well-being. In spite of what the media tell us, we know that the good life is not for sale. We understand that the good life is something we make together in households and communities, in partnership with other people and in harmony with Nature. We realize that happiness, health, security, and meaning come to us largely as gifts, and we feel called to preserve those gifts, enhance them if we can, and pass them on.
The glorification of private wealth will go on around the clock, in every medium, without any help from us. We need to counter that chorus by lifting our voices in praise of the wealth we share, recalling how our lives depend on one another, on generations past and future, on the bountiful Earth and all its creatures, on the spirit that lifts us into being and sustains us through every moment and reclaims us in the end.
Title: Common Wealth.
Authors: Sanders, Scott Russell
Source: Tikkun; Nov/Dec2003, Vol. 18 Issue 6, p24, 4p, 2bw
Document Type: Article