afflicting the comfortable (challenging the system)
Gramsci compared the Marxist notion of domination, by which was meant direct physical coercion by police, army, and law to political society, with that of hegemony, or ideological control though consent in civil society (unions, schools, churches, families etc.). Civil institutions, Gramsci thought, inculcated an entire system of values, beliefs and morality supportive of the established order and its dominating classes: hegemony was a worldview diffused through socialization into every area of daily life which, when internalized, became part of "common sense" (115)
~ from Theories of Development by Richard Peet with Elaine Hartwick
It’s always easy to believe in the system.* Sure, we might be critical of certain aspects of it, but overall we don’t think that much about it, because we live and function in it. We are not even aware of what the system is and how it informs the way we think and live.
But that’s to be expected, because those who are in power (and that includes those who are in power of knowledge), will work to justify their own authority. And while physical force and the threat of violence may sometimes be effective, why bother if you can compel obedience through “common sense”?
Unless we’re willing to be critical and aware of the system we inhabit—the authority structures, the institutions in place, the implicit “common sense” that we believe, we’ll just buy into the system. It just goes to show that they’ve gotten to us.
Remember that in Romans, Paul called for a renewing of the mind—that renewal must require a critical re-thinking of all our current assumptions and beliefs, even the ones that seem so deeply ingrained in us that they must just be “true” as opposed to socially constructed. We may not be able to “work outside the system” in most instances, but at the very least, we should be aware of its presence.
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Examples:
A slaveowner over 200 years ago could feel like a ethical, upstanding human being because he treated his slaves well and did not beat or rape them.
A rich man (made rich off predatory mortgage lending) feels good about himself because he tutors once a week in a lower income community and leaves large tips at restaurants.
Wal-Mart corporate believes that they are offering a valuable service to Americans by selling stuff at low, affordable prices. Meanwhile, they are depressing wages everywhere because they pay their own “associates” so poorly.
The most celebrated way to leave poverty is to receive a good education and get a higher paying job. What about the millions of others who still must sweep the streets, clean restaurants, take care of our parents in nursing homes and sell stuff? Will they always be left out of the equation? Is our pitiful minimum wage the best we can do?
We are told the poor will always be amongst us. Are we to complacently resign to that fact and continue to bandage wounds instead of addressing the causes of their poverty? And the cause of their poverty may not just be lack of education or skills, but it may be in the actual economic system of the country they live in.
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Working within the system is not altogether impossible but requires a high degree of integrity. You must be willing to risk losing all the benefits you may have gained in the eyes of the world. (Daniel, Esther).
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Perhaps to change the world, one must be willing to work with a set of compromises. Is compromise bad if it is necessary to create enough cooperation to effect real change?
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Sometimes, it may be a matter of creating alternatives or complementary systems so that others can see that another world (i.e. another system) is possible.
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Recently, our system has been failing. Are we going to bandage up the current system and assume it is still inherently okay or do we try to build something new?
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If it is the task of the prophet to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable and I consider myself among the comfortable, then do I need to be afflicted?
* By “the system”, I mean the set of various sub-systems or ways in which we organize and structure our life—from our companies, our government, our nonprofits, our businesses, our workplaces, our schools, our churches, our families, our property, our currency etc…
4 comments:
Well, I'd certainly caution against any attempt to start with a blank page and build a new system from there. Attempts to do so in the past have proved disastrous - I'm thinking of the French Revolution.
Are you really among the comfortable? That adage certainly doesn't speak toward materially comfortable people needing material affliction. Rather, I think it speaks toward those who are comfortable with the current order of things, the system as you call it. And it seems to me that you've just written a good deal about how uncomfortable you are with it.
That said, I had a good conversation with Mariya yesterday about reactions to radical truth. It's not enough to say, "That makes me think." Faith without works is dead.
Perhaps this is the source of your angst related to blogging - that it's just words.
Why do you think that the current system is fundamentally flawed? What sort of system should replace it? How confident are you that proposed solutions are superior, either in the abstract or in implementation?
Do you believe that the current system creates poverty, or that it merely fails to alleviate it? Do you think that this is inherent in the system? Do you believe that the examples you give of individuals profiting by exploiting others are typical of our system? What about examples of innovators and honest business profiting by effectively providing demanded services? Or is this an ideal that doesn't actually exist?
Sorry if these questions seem hostile. I'm really just curious.
Incidentally, Jason Furman disagrees on Walmart.
Nick, I guess I was unclear when I said “building a new system”. I was not thinking of a violent revolution (you’re right to say that that can have disastrous consequences), but rather of working outside the traditional institutions and structures of our societies and forming new organizations that might be more conducive to justice, community and equality. Working within the system would be trying to become an important person in a large company to influence the way the company does its business so that it treats its workers, its suppliers and the environment better. Working outside the system may be starting a new a business, governed by a different structure (e.g. a worker-owned cooperative). Others have started interesting alternative currency systems, community land trusts and other alternative organizations. My question is whether the institutions today are viable for a just society? Or whether we need to start thinking about what alternatives there could be. All this in the context of keeping in mind our inherent sinfulness and the fact that an ideal system cannot be created. What we can hope for, is one that is atleast more just and in line with God’s kingdom or more able to keep sin in check.
I appreciate your clarification on the adage about the comfortable. That being said, I still question the level of consumption (i.e. “material comfort”) that I’m engaged in. If everyone in the world lived as I did, the earth wouldn’t be able to sustain it (We already sense the tension with China’s growing energy consumption). Do the rich and comfortable need to learn to live with less so that the poor can have a decent standard of living? Or is continued annual GDP growth possible and sustainable? Do we trust in the magic omnipotence of technology to create clean renewable energy sources and viable waste disposal?
I agree that words needs to be coupled with action, but I also believe that words do matter. Words have the potential to change the way people act and behave if they stick around. Words can chance the consciousness of society. Words and images, atleast in the form of advertisements, have made us lust after things that we don’t need. Perhaps there can also be redeeming purposes for them.
I think my questioning around blogging relates more to whether I need to go out there and “do something” or “start something” or whether it is enough that I work as a writer and teacher and encourage others to do things, while trying my best to be responsible in the lifestyle decisions that I make. The discomfort also comes from an acknowledgement of my own participation in the injustices of the world, and feeling somewhat hypocritical in writing these things.
Thanks for your comments Jonathan. I really appreciate them. I do believe that our current system is fundamentally flawed for a variety of reasons. I guess to mention one that's been on my mind-- the disproportionate amount of power and domination that the rich have. Our current system is far from the Jubilee economics in Leviticus 25 where wealth can rarely be concentrated and poverty does not get passed along from generation to generation. I'm not sure if I would say the current system creates poverty, but it certainly sustains it. A system that sustains poverty and fails to alleviate it is part and parcel with a system that creates it.
As for solutions, I personally would like to see more egalitarian and communal organizations grow in today's capitalist environment. (e.g. check out worker-owned cooperatives like Mondragon in Spain). I don't think it is possible to create a perfect system in this world, but I think these cooperatives atleast offer an alternative to the corporate shareholder capitalism in America.
In any case, to point to some common ground, here's an excerpt from Walter Wink's Engaging the Powers:
God did not create capitalism or socialism, but there must be some kind of economic system. The simultaneity of creation, fall and redemption means that God at one and the same time upholds a given political or economic system, since some such system is required to support human life; condemns that system insofar as it is destructive of full human actualization; and presses for its transformation into a more humane order. Conservatives stress the first, revolutionaries the second, reformers the third. The Christian is expected to hold together all three.
Perhaps you are more along the line of conservative/reformer, where as I probably fall more along the revolutionary. Atleast for myself, I need to continue to be critical of the current system but also to learn to recognize the aspects of it that are good.
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