Wrestling Mammon
A fresh read of John Wesley, The Use of Money
Allen ParkerWinter Spiritual Life Retreat, Congregation at Duke University Chapel
February 11, 2012
Our thoughts on money cover every emotion - from fear to greed, anger to euphoria - and few topics evoke such strong response. If you think about it, our thoughts about money often run in loops of suspicion, panic, and smug satisfaction in the span of a few moments. Why?
On one hand we hear calls for our time, talents, gifts, and service, and almost in the same breath we hear chastening cries against consumerism, income inequalities, and perceived injustices of the economic system. Some cry for the end of the very market system that, if you think about it, enables them to have a place to share such feelings.
We'll explore a classic text, John Wesley's sermon on the use of money, and discuss ways that his wisdom speaks to our current struggles.
The 18th century finds England in the grips of the Industrial Revolution, with groups in America and France building on Enlightenment thinking to foment revolution. Goods, services, and literature become more widely available, and with that new access comes a rising outrage, a foreshadowing of movements against corporate greed, unequal distribution of wealth, and the plight of the poor. From the midst of this we have a text, a sermon by John Wesley (1703-1791) titled "The Use of Money," that speaks directly to the rising pressures and criticisms of wealth.
Modern times bring us similar criticisms and pressures - the 2008 financial meltdown, political campaign rhetoric, and Occupy Wall Street demands, to name a few. We hear essentially two lines of thinking: either an individualist track that leads toward greater division, or a collectivist track that leads toward social justice. What if a third track exists? Enter Wesley's text from centuries ago. Get ready to be surprised and fascinated by the way this theologian challenges conventional wisdom and provides an alternative to the bipolar rhetoric of today.
Money as the...
George Frederic Watts, Mammon
1884
- grand corrupter
- bane of virtue
- pest of society
Chairman, Davos 2012
- “We have a general morality gap, we are over-leveraged, we have neglected to invest in the future, we have undermined social coherence, and we are in danger of completely losing the confidence of future generations...”
- “... solving problems in the context of outdated & crumbling models will only dig us deeper into the hole...”
- “...capitalism in its current form has no place in the world around us...”
Money
- Where it means clean water
- Clean living conditions
- Access to medical care
- and if Jubilee never happens
- despair, without hope
Money and Anxiety
- If we understood the true role of money in our lives, we would not think simply in terms of spending it or saving it.
- Money exerts a deep emotional influence on who we are and what we tell ourselves we can never have.
- Our long unwillingness to understand the emotional and spiritual effects of money on us is at the heart of why we have come to know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
- Money has everything to do with the pursuit of an idealistic life, while at the same time, it is at the root of our daily frustrations.
Is money like manna?
Bernardino Luini, The Gathering of the Manna
1520-23
- manna ( Exodus 16) — survival, sufficiency
- distributes likes human height, weight?
- money - stored time, talent
- Black Swan effects
- distributes like human creativity, talent?
Money as...
Georges de La Tour, Paid Money
1625
- Stored unit of value for time, talent
- Relief from barter
- Allowing for trade across different resource-rich or specialty regions
Money as...
William Gropper, Piece Work
1953-56
- Wages evolved from piece-work, to wage-labor, to salaried positions
- Depersonalized exchange
- Separate public, private spheres
- Freedom to enjoy the private sphere
Wesley: Save
- Save all you can
- Viewing money as a store of God-given time, talent, gifts
- Spending becomes an expression of who you are and what you believe
- Why cast it into the sea?
Velocity of Money
- Consumer
- Hoarder
- Saver
- Middle Class
Stewardship
Berthe Morisot, Getting Out of Bed
1886
- Who is the best steward of the hours you are given?
The Unjust Steward
Marinus, Parable of the Unjust Steward
1540
-
Luke 16:1-13 — cannot serve both God and money
- diaskorpizo — scattered, squandered
- oikonomia — household management
- Wesley: if the world is shrewd, comfortable with money, why not also people of faith?
Wesley: Save
- Providing for your household to live simply, not throwing it into the sea
- Taking care against risks that may arise
- Surplus happens...
Stewards
- What needs to be true for us to trust ourselves to be good stewards?
- Can human beings can be left free as individuals and families to live their lives as they see fit?
- Can they come together voluntarily to solve their joint problems?
A Great Irony
Donna Walker, Simple Living
2011
- Living simply leads to abundance & surplus
- Living extravagantly leads to scarcity
- True for individuals
- ... for households
- ... for institutions
- ... for creation
The Individual
- Who is the individual?
- Maximize individual utility?
- Maximize community utility?
- Curricula:
- Household
- Cultural norms
- Madison Avenue
- Species competition
- Community of faith
Choices
- Discretionary spending
- Private sphere
- Depersonalized
Leveraging our numbers
- Individual
- Family
- Church
- Charities
- Work group
- State
- Consent?
- ... Compulsion?
- ... Necessity?
Tragedy of the Commons
- Hardin, 1968 — Individual utility vs Common good multiple individuals,
- acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest,
- will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource,
- even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this to happen
- but what is “un-owned property”?
- what arrangements constitute “common” property?
Human Condition
Community
Growing Sum
Zero Sum
Individual
Community
- To what extent...
- On what basis...
- ... do others have a claim on the hours you are given?
Community
- What needs to be true for us to trust a collective body to be a good steward?
- Corporations
- Governments
- Institutions
Plato’s Societies
Raphael, School of Athens
1509–1510
- Society of Luxury — corrupts the individual, and then the state
- Society of Need — minimal, but who guards us from the guardians?
- The American project
Polybius and Anacyclosis
Polybius (200-118), Histories
- [cyclically repeat from below]
- Despotism
- Kingship
- Tyranny
- Aristocracy
- Oligarchy
- Federal Republic
- Oligarchy
- Democracy
- Ochlocracy
- [cyclically repeat to above]
Enlightenment
- Charles Murray - America’s four “founding virtues”
- marriage,
- industriousness,
- community,
- faith
- 1960-2010 America - from similar rates between the classes to markedly different
- Each virtue
- Limbic response
- Neo-cortex response
homo reciprocans
| Prisoner B's Strategies | ||
| Prisoner A's Strategies |
Do Not Confess | Confess |
| Do Not Confess |
1 Year 1 Year |
Parole Life |
| Confess |
Parole Life |
20 Years 20 Years |
Culture
- Do cultural factors matter?
- More individualist cultures (US, Western Europe)
- More collectivist cultures (China, Korea, Japan)
- Command economies
- Market economies
Wesley: Earn
- Knowing yourself and God
- Without harm
- Without delay
Creation of Wealth
Keep it local
- Community context
- Phenomenon of Local Currencies
- Pittsboro
- Ithaca
- Berkshire
- Re-personalizing
- Less private
- Relationship-oriented
Does keeping it local work?
- Community context
- “Least worst” intersection?
Sabbath Economics
- Maxim 2 of 3: Disparity of wealth...
- ... is not natural
- ... is the result of sin
- ... must be mitigated by the community of faith practicing wealth redistribution
Resources
- Which are finite?
- manna, height, weight, water
- Which are limitless?
- talent, creativity, imagination
Human Value
- What defines human value, worth?
- United Nations: freedom, equality, dignity, rights
- Judeo-Christian (Gen 1:27-28): imago deo
- IQ?
- Beauty?
- Wealth?
- Power?
Inequality
Kinsler & Kinsler, 1999
- Worse now?
- Better?
- Years, decades, centuries, millenia
Inequality
- Are we talking about...
- ... starvation?
- ... stuff?
- US poverty level, family of 4 = $22,350
- say, living on 70% of that, saving the rest
- Ranks in the top 12% of the world
- www.globalrichlist.com
Human Value
Gustave Moreau,
The Wicked Rich and the Poor Lazarus,
1875-1878
- If wealth is not what defines human value...
- ... then is disparity of wealth “wrong”?
Poverty as pathology
- David Wilson (Binghamton University)
- “poverty” and “pathology” are not synonyms
- social capital and financial capital are not interchangeable
- Colin Campbell, The China Study
- Diseases of poverty, affluence
Root causes?
- What causes disparity of wealth?
- Internal factors, both elective and fixed
- External factors, both circumstantial and structural
- Is poverty the problem, per se?
- The poor will be with you always
Basic requirements
|
 |
Key for factor-driven economies |
Efficiency enhancers
|
|
Key for efficiency-driven economies |
Basic requirements
|
|
Key for innovation-driven economies |
| STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT | |||||
| Stage 1 Factor-driven |
Transition from stage 1 to stage 2 |
Stage 2 Efficiency-driven |
Transition from stage 2 to stage 3 |
Stage 3 Innovation-driven |
|
| GDP per capita (US $) thresholds | <2,000 | 2,000 - 2,999 | 3,000 - 8,999 | 9,000 - 17,000 | >17,000 |
Black Swans
- The left tails...
- The right tails...
- Extent of participating in economic growth
Speedbump: Do No Harm
- Is this possible in a distributed ownership, depersonalized, market economy?
- Effects of rooting out inefficiency
- Schumpeter’s waves
Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950),
History of Economic Analysis
| The Shumpeterian Cycle of Innovation and Entrepreneurship | |||||
| Shumpeter's waves accelerate | |||||
| Water power Textile Iron |
Steam Rail Steel |
Electricity Chemicals Internal-combustion engine |
Petrochemicals Electronics Aviation |
Digital network Software New media |
|
| Pace of Innovation |
 |
|
|
|
|
| First Wave | Second Wave | Third Wave | Fourth Wave | Fifth Wave | |
| 1785 | 1845 | 1900 | 1950 | 1990 | 2020 |
| duration | 60 | 55 | 50 | 40 | 30 |
Political-economy
Kinsler & Kinsler, 1999
- Wrestling with mammon is not new
- Organizing to make decisions in the face of disparate...
- Power
- Wealth
- Capacity
Malthusian Trap
Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834),
Essay on the Principle of Population
- Classic economics (Adam Smith)
- “Dismal Science”
- Zero sum, scarcity
- Thomas Robert Malthus
- “sooner or later population gets checked by famine”
Malthusian Trap
Viktor Vasnetsov. Four Horsemen of Apocalypse
1887
The Great Divergence
Another Great Divergence
Sabbath Economics
- Maxim 1 of 3 (Myers)
- World as created is abundant, provided:
- Human restraint on appetites
- Live within limits
- Echoes of Plato
Back to Manna
Bernardino Luini, The Gathering of the Manna
1520-23
- Collective: from each according to ability, to each according to need
- Zero-sum: hoard (& rot)
- Welsey’s 3rd path...
- Individual surplus, spills over to the household, then to the community
Sabbath Economics
Classics Illustrated No. 7
1955
- Maxim 3 of 3 (Myers)
- The prophetic message is “good news” to the poor because it calls people to practice redistribution
Life at the margin
Navid Eghbalieh, In Wait
2005
- Should we...
- How do we...
- ... best help the poor, those at the margins?
- health care, food, shelter
- old age, disability
Surplus v Charity
Adolph William Bouguereau (1883-1950),
Charity
- Generosity / Charity
- we’re in control, doing good works
- Surplus
- having lived simply and met our obligations to self, household
- the natural result
- no other use for it
Wesley: Give
- Having earned all you can
- Having saved all you can
- Give all you can
7 Generations vs. 3
Robert Albrecht (1966-), Iroquois
- To the extent that we remain silent on...
- Civics
- Money
- Sex
- ... we cede to the default curricula of the society around us
(Government, CNN, MTV, limbic)
Resources on the Web
- http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/sermons/50/
- The Sermons of John Wesley, Sermon 50, The Use of Money
- http://books.google.com/books...
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan - The Impact of the Highly Improbable, 2007, Second Edition 2010
- http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html
- Garrett Hardin, Tragedy of the Commons, 1968
- http://www.sabbatheconomics.org/content/index.php
- Sabbath Economics
- http://books.google.com/books...
- Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, 2012
- http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/02/06/charles-murray-book-review.html
- Beginning of a five-part critique of Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 which does not differ with the data (or the statement of the problem), but which is concerned with the interpretations, reactions, and conclusions (or lack thereof).