Consider the value of a simple thing: What is the worth, for instance, of a snapshot of a deceased parent?
To the child, it might mediate memories, perhaps, or be an object of affection itself. But this is the first generation that can log onto the eBay Internet auction site and answer that question with a dollars-and-cents figure, in a matter of minutes.
And that scares William Schweiker, a theologian at the University of Chicago.
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In a culture that has pursued, produced and celebrated material goods like never before, it is not the things themselves that bother Schweiker. Nor is it old-fashioned greed, though that plays its insidious role in consumerism.
His principal concern is not the free-market economic system that has proven such a powerful engine in the late 20th Century, the titanic movements of Wall Street or the increasingly global nature of business.
What worries Schweiker is that people talk about the rest of life in economic terms, too.
Marriage is understood, and sometimes lived, as a contractual arrangement. Civic involvement is measured by cost-benefit analysis. Art, faith, memory–all are seen through a philosophical lens designed to explain money and commodities.
The goals of maximizing utility and benefit have become so pervasive that Schweiker sees a near-universal “acceleration of human desire”–a moment-by-moment pursuit of satisfaction that has sped up the pace of our interior and exterior lives, to the exclusion of reflection and contemplation.
Bottom line: “The complexity and richness of things is lost if the only way we can talk about things is in economic terms.” And the payoff is, most people are hardly aware that is happening.
“I was going through a Kmart a few years back, and there was a mother with a child in her cart,” Schweiker said.
“At that time, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the toy du jour, and this child, who was just learning to speak, was leaning toward them with her arms out yelling, `Turtles! Turtles! Turtles! Turtles!’
“Already at that young age this child was absorbing the shape of her world and forming a language devoted to those things the market was selling.”
This week, the theologian has gathered a group of scholars, from economists to philosophers to political scientists, for “Having: A Conference on Property and Possession in Religious and Public Life.”
Concluding Friday, the two-day event crosses traditional academic boundaries. Schweiker defines it as an exercise in the “theology of culture.”
“This project isn’t about saying that we should all give away our possessions and live as hermits. That could be as humanly destructive as an overwhelming consumerism,” he said. “But how is it that the value and logic of one system–economics–has started to permeate all the other systems?”
These are not new themes in organized religion, of course. Scriptures from most major faiths warn of the danger of becoming possessed by one’s possessions. Likewise, they recognize the power for good and evil, of economic models and ideas–think of the Christian parables of workers in the vineyard.
But Schweiker believes that religious communities feel a particular struggle with the topic in this day and age.
On one hand, he says, churches, synagogues and mosques have been “immense forces for the relief of suffering,” counteracting the worst excesses of economic injustice with charity.
“Also the churches, synagogues and mosques are one of the few forums for public discussion about economic matters and the life of the culture,” he said.
At the same time, he worries that many religious communities have subconsciously embraced the commodification of life, “marketing” themselves to potential members and treating faith as a tool to maximize satisfaction.
The best way to combat that, Schweiker believes, is to analyze the way people and institutions behave, and tease out the underlying philosophies–to live the examined life. That requires an age-old faith in the power of ideas to change lives, for good and for ill.
What comes out of such an ambitious quest? What is the bottom line, the return on this investment of time and energy?
“Sometimes when people ask that question, I want to say, `Nothing. Nothing is going to come out of it,'” he said.
Nothing, that is, that can be auctioned on eBay. But even in this obsessed age, that does not necessarily mean it is nothing of value.
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