Goldilocks or Miss Piggy?

Catholic New Times, Dec 5, 2004 by Cristina Vanin

During a recent visit to southern Ontario, Sallie McFague, theologian in residence at the Vancouver School of Theology, challenged her audiences to live differently in the community of life that is the planet Earth. Drawing on the her work, Life Abundant: Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril, McFague indicated that living differently requires, in part, that we think differently. This means we have to confront our dominant economic system and uncover the assumptions implicit in the worldview that underlies this system.

The neoclassical economics of our time deals with the allocation of scarce resources among competing users and uses by relying on decentralized markets. It assumes that human beings are individuals primarily motivated by self-interest. Then, if each of us acts to maximize our own interests, all will eventually benefit. Such assumptions are not neutral or value-free. The fulfillment of individual self-interest is a particular value and, in market capitalism, this value is understood exclusively in monetary terms. Consequently, other values such as the just distribution of profits and the well-being of the planet are excluded.

In this view, human beings are related to the world as a collection of individuals who come together like parts of a well-oiled machine in order to ensure the gratification of their self-interests. The goal of this machine is growth, measured according to the Gross Domestic Product. We presume that the GDP must always rise because that is all that makes an economy healthy. We do not see that the GDP includes anything that involves money exchange, things that are harmful as well as those that are beneficial. We do not see that the GDP excludes things like volunteer work, unpaid housework, or unpaid care of children and the elderly, because these do not involve the exchange of money. We do not see that it excludes the costs of the deterioration of the planet.

The supremacy of the neoclassical economic worldview has led some to describe it as a religion--"consumerism"--the civil religion that we all share, regardless of other faith commitments. If religion, most basically, is that which makes us understand the world and our place in it, then market capitalism and its worldview as epitomized in consumerism is not only a religion, but surely one of the most successful.

Its success is due to the lack of alternatives. Without any other models to consider, we come to believe that this is the way things are and must be, that this is the only, and best, way to live.

One such alternative vision is what McFague calls "ecological economics" or others call "economics for community." Resources are allocated according to sustainability (the whole community must be able to survive) and distributive justice (survival of the community depends on all members having the basics to survive and flourish). The explicit and primary value and goal is the well-being of the whole of the planet Earth. In this worldview, human beings are inalienable members of this community, individuals-in-community, radically dependent on the Earth and its processes: we are members of nature's household, not consumers of nature's wealth. And, like any household, there are three basic house rules: 1) take only your share, what you need for a decent life--don't raid the fridge; 2) clean up after yourselves; take care of your waste; 3) keep the house in good shape for your children and your children's children.

With real alternatives available to us, we have a choice. How will we see ourselves? What constitutes a truly good and abundant life? How do we choose to live? Are we willing to create a vision of a world that is sustainable, that provides for all within the planet's real limits, that is fair and just to all members of the household, humans as well as other species, present members as well as future generations? Are we willing to live within limits so that other members may also have enough?

Perhaps we need to take a lesson from Goldilocks, who had a sense of what was too much, what was not enough and what was "just right." Unfortunately, most of us are Miss Piggy. "More is more" and there can never be too much of it.

Cristina Vanin teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at St. Jerome's University in Waterloo, Ont.