The spirit of capitalism, 2000 - emotional maturity of adults

Public Interest, Wntr, 2000 by David Bosworth

But this balance was severely challenged in the mid nineteenth century by the Industrial Revolution, with its widespread mechanization of work, specialization of thought, and urbanization of living space--here begins in earnest the still ongoing institution of Weber's iron cage. This balance was further challenged in the early twentieth century by the rise of consumerism, with its widespread boosting of new "needs" through instant credit and the constant proselytizing of advertising--here begins the seductive phase of scientific capitalism (and its cultural contradictions), its paradoxical use of the techniques of the iron cage to create the mirage of what we might call "the gilded carrot," the ever-changing and marketable object of constant desire. The full effects of this second challenge (when added to the first) were delayed by an extended depression and an all-consuming war and thus couldn't be seen until an entire generation, the Boomers, had been raised in relative peace and unprecedented prosperity under its influence.

The failure of that generation (my own) to mature into responsible adulthood, especially into responsible parenthood, is dramatic proof of both the ideological power and social destructiveness of the current economic order. Such a failure is also a sign that the precarious, but necessary, balance between scientific capitalism and Judeo-Christianity has been lost, that the former has subsumed, co-opted, and superseded the latter to our current detriment and future moral peril.

Great expectations (1960)

The discrepancy between the hope invested in the post-War generation and our actual performance has been so severe that the anticipation itself invites further examination. By the mid fifties, giddy on the optimism of consumerism and global political domination, America really seemed to believe that its children, like its products, would necessarily be "new and improved"--that every day, in every way, we were indeed getting better and better. Year after year, in classrooms, assemblies, and convocation halls, we were told in confident tones how special we were: the richest, best educated, most technologically advanced, and implicitly--because it was naively supposed, our character must "rise" with the surging tide of our GNP--the most righteous generation in the history of the planet. Both the oratory of officialdom and the messages of advertising were glad to agree that we were the ones destined to redeem the golden promise of the American dream: heirs not simply to the pursuit of happiness but to its purcha se and possession.

The extremity of that hope (and its secret folly) is one of the stronger memories of my own, mostly benign suburban upbringing. I recall especially a posh reception following a classmate's bar mitzvah during which we, his seventh-grade friends, were made to enter an enormous dining hall as though a wedding party or a royal procession. Two by two, a boy beside a girl, to the beat of a band's ceremonial music, we were marched up an aisle, parting a sea of damp-eyed adults, and then onto a raised platform where we ate, conversed, and later even danced, elevated above, yet surrounded by, the parents of suburbia hundreds in number.