FAITHFULLY SITTING IN THE PEW OF ALL-CONSUMPTION

Anarcho-environmental novelist/essayist Edward Abbey (in One Life at a Time, Please [1988]): "We can see that the religion of endless growth--like any religion based on blind faith--is a kind of mania, a form of lunacy, indeed a disease."

He continues, "The one disease to which the growth mania bears an exact analogical resemblance is cancer. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

So, neoclassical economics a metastasizing neoplasm (cancer)? Seems so.

But, easy for us to say some academic domain or other is "cancerous," and a "religion," because we can relegate it to the Ivory Tower and look the other way (toward mass-distraction entertainment, no doubt). But, if so, then we, living under this economic-political regime--let's be honest--are the cancer cells, consuming the planetary body, spreading the destruction, and, what's more, doing it with what could be labeled religious fervor.

From the pews in the Church of All-Consumption, this all seems righteous as instructed by our faith in this historical process. The True Faith in this process--the really "true" faith--is that we do it all for God and religion, that "God" has ordained this religio-economic regime.

This, this takes lots of "faith." Glad I don't have so much of the kind (though, I'm sitting in the pew with the rest of you). And, the "collection plate" as it is passed is really a consumption platter from which we partake: put in a few dollars, and take out the manna of planetary destruction.

PASSING TIME OF THE DISEMBEDDED LONE WOLF

Intrapsychic dynamics relate to the social organization of production, of course, although it receives, as best I can determine, not nearly enough attention. But the radical (hyper-) modernism which disembodies and disembeds life today brings us to this question: How did we ever come to perceive body and mind as separate, nature as dead resource, and place as inconsequential?

That the modern identity is peculiarly and severely individuated should be no surprise when global consumer capitalism as the social organization of production creates Homo economicus as raison d'etre of existence. The highly individuated individual has as primary task (other than to be a consumate consumer) to create a do-it-yourself universe, or so each believes. The illusion of a do-it-yourself universe survives and depends on the exigencies of consumerism.

It is also illusion that this kind of social organization of production can endure. A new individual, new ideology, new society, and new social organization of production--and a new, salubrious intimate relation to Earth, body, and place--will have to be (re)created anew over the decades of the 21st century. The self-organizing powers of the Universe are manifesting, if we but look--and look at ourselves.

Which brings up this Hopi wisdom prophecy about the passed time of the Lone Wolf:

"To my fellow swimmers, there is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore, they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know that the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our heads above water. And I say, see who is there with you and celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves, for the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey come to a halt. The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves. Banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we have been waiting for."

And I say the ones we have been waiting for are our future selves that the self-organizng powers of the Universe are creating now as we push off into the middle of the stream of the Always-Being-Created.