The Distributist's Bookshelf: Henry David Thoreau's Walden

In A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers / Walden; Or, Life in the Woods / The Maine Woods / Cape Cod (Library of America) by Henry David Thoreau. ♦♦♦♦♦ ♠ ♠
(New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1985).
pp. 321-587

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life..."

- Thoreau, What I Lived For

In 1845, Henry David Thoreau took to the woods near Concord, Massachusetts with the goal "to live deliberately." He meticulously recorded the practical exigencies of his experiment and set them down in several hundreds of words which are amongst the finest prose ever composed in the English language. Whether or not Thoreau succeeded in his Quixotic experiment, he certainly did succeed in crafting one of the finest and most beautiful books ever written by an American.

It may seem a similarly Quixotic experiment to make Thoreau's treatise a hallmark of the ideal Distributist's Bookshelf. His philosophy of transcendentalism, for example, is rather at odds with the traditional metaphysical axiology of distributist thinkers like Belloc and Chesterton. His romantic notions of ideal pagandom and his fetish for Oriental wisdom would fain have met Belloc's approval, if quoted to him over a beer in a homely British Inn. But let's take a look at Walden and see why I think it deserves a place in every truly humane reader's library.

A good place to start is Thoreau's discussion of Economy. In the first chapter of his book, he outlines the "necessaries of life for man" which include "Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel" (332). He distinguishes these from luxuries, which he says are not merely unnecessary, but often times positive distractions from more important things (334). He continues, in the same place,

When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced... (op. cit.).

Thoreau embraces the ideal of leisure. He observes that once man has taken care of the essentials of life, he should look at his freedom from want as an opportunity to contemplate higher things, rather than a chance for getting surplus wealth. Yet, this latter object is what he found occupying most of his contemporaries: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" (329). This desperation is largely due, Thoreau contends, to the industrial system, which begets a cyclic obsession with wealth, rather than true value:

The mass of men... are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them. There are some who complain most energetically and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their duty. I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters (335).

Now, this is an observation which the distributist critique of modern economy certainly shares. Thoreau's ideals may differ; he may have given his contemplative energies over to principles with which we do not sympathize. But he speaks to the fundamental drive in man to look beyond the merely material for more important things. His view of work and labor are, in the main, somewhat problematic. Sometimes, he seems only to view pejoratively the Divine mandate to "till the earth," which we know is a holy and meaningful occupation. Yet, even here, there is a point of contact with distributist principles. Thoreau is grappling with that special punishment which God selected for Adam after his fall in Eden: that he would henceforth only bring forth his food from the soil "by the sweat of his brow" (Gen. 3:19). The end of human labor is not in itself, but only meaningful within the context of a fully Christian anthropology, which takes into account the restorative power of grace. But Thoreau grasps that there is something deeper and beyond mere toiling.

Thoreau's complaints with the modern life do not stop there. He moved into relative isolation in order to commune with Nature. The hustle and bustle of modernity, for him, was disruptive to meaningful communion, as he explains in his chapter on solitude:

What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This will vary with different natures, but this is the place where a wise man will dig his cellar... (428).

Once more, that Thoreau found his own roots to be in a romantic deification of nature is surely not an agreeable end to the argument. But he starts out on the right path. He knows what Chesterton called "the homelessness of man." The agrarian ideal of many distributists, the movement "back to the land," is similar in its pursuit of this "perennial source of our life." Thoreau's cabin in the woods is the place where he goes in order to find himself: it is typical of that place which Chesterton describes in his essay, The Surrender of a Cockney: "Every man... has waiting for him somewhere a country house which he has never seen; but which was built for him in the very shape of his soul. It stands patiently waiting to be found... and when the man sees it he remembers it, though he has never seen it before."

Many other specific ideas and virtues of Walden might be referenced: its cunning ctiticisms of industrial squalor, its celebration of the value of home and homestead, its wry sarcasm about the many material possessions which man uses to prop himslef up (literally - in one place, Thoreau offers a wonderfully amusing satire on furniture: "Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse") (see 374).

The greatest asset of Walden, however, is hard to put into words. It is its very ethos. The sheer beauty of Thoreau's prose is in some places literally enough to move one to tears of empathy. His descriptions of crickets chirping, or the sun rising, all the sundry wonders of creation which modern man takes so much for granted - these are the crown jewels of Walden. If not a single ethical principle articulated as such finds its way home when one reads the book, he shall still be somehow a better man for having poured through its pages - or rather, had them poured into him. For Thoreau's liquescent sentences speak directly to the romance in the heart of man which Chesterton knew to be the practical form of reverent awe and wonder. A distributist should return to the pages of Walden often, if only to re-sensitize himself to the miraculous renewal of creation that happens in each moment of every day: the budding of every flower, the falling of every snowflake.

Somehow, this ethos behind Walden is the ultimate communication of its words to the reader, and perhaps no digest is possible. Even Thoreau himself, a peerless master of our language, found it difficult to convey summarily this finding of his own practical experience. So, I shall end at a loss for words, and allow the author one final attempt of his own:

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal—that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched (495).

Browner

That is, more Brown. Or a pun on "downer." Take your pick.

Any way you slice it, the lessons we learn here are wide-reaching. A lot of good currents coming to the surface with this recent election in Massachusetts. A lot of murky flotsam, too.

This is opportunity for healthy, robust discussion amongst those working to bring about the Reign of Christ the King. Such a discussion is happening over at Mark Shea's blog. I really recommend checking it out. Mark brings his usual acerbic wit to the matter, and the combox is all abuzz.

For my part, I continue to urge caution and balanced perspective. We must remain sober and not allow the triumphalism of the ruling classes in their victories to distract us from the lacunae that the little ones of YHWH always manage to fall through. Remember: the best measure of the justice of any social order, or society, is its treatment of its least members. And remember what a myriad of faces Christ wears when he takes to the breadlines in rags or returns naked to the womb of women in crisis. We still have a lot of work to do, and there is no victory that we can really celebrate except His.

Headlong, Mad, and Dangerous Footsteps

A while back I posted some ruminations on the Manhattan Declaration. [The manifesto, by the way, continues to gather signatures and doesn't show any signs of running out of steam. Quite the contrary: the most recent issue of the Philadelphia Archdiocese's newspaper, the Catholic Standard & Times, contained a front-page article urging Cardinal Rigali's flock to add their signatures.] I noted that the document contained a certain air, an attitude of - for want of a cleaner word - "revolution." That revolutionary spirit continues to undulate in our society, and those of us who have sensitized ourselves to its visceral rhythm know that the force of its undertow has only increased as the months have waxed on.

In recent comments, President Obama himself acknowledged this force. In an interview following the special election in Massachussettes, Obama offered this analysis:

[T]he same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. People are angry and they are frustrated. Not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years.

I don't think only a cynic would read into these comments a swipe at the previous administration: I think it's pretty evident. But, no matter: the previous administration deserves its stripes plenty. Nevertheless, I do think it would be naive to name the Bush administration as the effective cause of this spirit of increasing disillusionment with our government and this revolutionary mood building up in movements like the "tea partiers" and the rest. I think, rather, that the national tragedy of September 11th, 2001 would be a better place to look for the kind of sociological shock and trauma which could feasibly cause the existential angst so many are feeing today. I predict that historians and anthropologists a generation removed from us will be able to look back with more clarity and will likely analyse that event as a signal one for many changes in our society, good and bad.

I have my reservations about Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts. I do not see it as the great ideological monument that others have euphorically announced it to be. In fact, I see the Brown-Coakley race as a good case-in-point for why caution is needed in these times.

Most people you talk to about Brown don't know all that much about him. They will be shocked, for instance, to find out that he posed nude in Cosmopolitan in the 1980s. (You can google it if you want confirmation; I don't typically direct people deliberately into what might be an occasion of sin.) Now, I don't think that Brown's decision to bare all in 1982 matters much to his political candidacy for today. He may have been converted between then and now; he might have repudiated his decision publicly for all I know; for that matter, he might secretly have lived as a mafia don in the intervening years. It was a long time ago; many years have passed. My point is that it hardly got mentioned and the sort of vetting and investigation that candidates are usually put through seems to have been swept under by stronger currents in this recent election. Therein lies the danger.

Revolution is a dangerous thing. When I read the President's remarks today, I had to give him credit for his sober insight. And for whatever reason, all I could think of was the motif of eerie footsteps with which Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities symbolizes the dangerous and inscrutable forces of revolution:

Headlong, mad, and dangerous footsteps to force their way into anybody's life, footsteps not easily made clean again if once stained red, the footsteps raging in Saint Antoine afar off, as the little circle sat in the dark London window.

The novel, of course, is about the lives of several people who find themselves swept up suddenly in currents that are somehow greater than the sum of all their individual motives. It typifies well the danger and the power of the revolutionary spirit.

Revolution can be merely reactionary. It can be fueled by anger, or fear, or even boredom. And when revolution is such, it is perilous. The Catholic hesitancy to revolution was always based on this insight: that revolution which merely reacts, which bases itself upon the premise that "anything would be better" than the status quo is dangerous and irresponsible. The status quo, at least, is static: it stands. Chesterton also remarked that the world does not progress, it wobbles. And wobbling, it is always susceptible to toppling and to falls. A revolution that blindly seeks to destroy the current state of affairs and does not care with what it shall supplant those conditions may result in nothing more than a crumbled society, a crippled thing that cannot again be made to stand.

Real revolution, Chesterton pointed out, is aimed at restoration. Real revolution - which the Church embraces under different names, such as "conversion" or "reform" - only tears down in order to build something better. Chesterton called this continual process in Christian orthodoxy "the Eternal Revolution."

I am glad that folks are beginning to get angry and to get fed up with the status quo. I am glad that the two-party dominance of American politics has begun to leave a sour taste in many people's mouths. I am glad that they are calling for a greater voice and ability for action within the political process - that they are demanding transparency and accountability.

But we must continue to be vigilant lest we get caught up in anger and forget what we're angry about. We should not be angry mostly because things are organized such and such a way, but because they are NOT organized in some definite, better way. If Scott Brown becomes an ideal merely because he's not Martha Coakley, then we have cause to pause. We must ask ourselves whether we've settled for something less than ideal because it's expedient for the time being, or whether we have temporarily forgotten our grander ideals in the energy of the moment. If there is any hint of the latter sentiment, then that is the dangerous and perilous spirit of revolution sweeping us away down some unknown path. If it is true - and I think it is, at least partly - that the same spirit that swept Obama into office also swept Scott Brown into his seat, well then that is a cunning and wily spirit with a powerful strength to sweep, and it might end up sweeping the legs of our standing Republic right out from under us.

So, caution; vigilance! Let us continue to remember our ideals and to talk about final goals. Insofar as a revolutionary spirit leads us to give our heart over to what could be rather than what is, then it is a wholesome and healthy spirit to be embraced. That spirit will sound in our hearts as an organized marching tune, a rhythm with which we can fall in step and progress towards some definite goal. But let us be wary of the confusion of footsteps that the other spirit of revolution brings: headlong, mad, and dangerous footsteps that may, if we fall into line with them, leave us trampled on the road to nowhere.

Movie Review: Demographic Winter

In troubling economic times such as these, there tends to be a lot of discussion about bubbles and bursts, dwindling resources and bottlenecking. The world's diplomatic leaders, gathering a few weeks ago in Copenhagen to discuss the impact of human economy on ecology, highlighted the sensitive and crucial import of these questions. Drastic times, as they say, call for drastic measures. There may be disagreement among the masses as to whether the times really even are drastic, but that doesn't stop the powers that be from suggesting some dire solutions.

Infamously, at the height of the Copenhagen summit, a Canadian journalist started a buzz about adopting China's one-child policy for the good of the planet. The suggestion is pretty audacious, but not only for its macabre Malthusian methods. It is outrageous because it would actually put the final nail in an already tightly clamped coffin-lid.

I speak of the coffin of Demographic Winter. I am not here suggesting that the human race, as a whole, faces imminent extinction - unless the cosmos smacks us to honor its commitment to the Mayan prophecy for 2012. No, I don't fear the extinction of our whole race. But parts of it are certainly in that coffin, buried alive, and if ever rescued, they will only be wraiths of their former selves.

The two-part documentary Demographic Winter and Demographic Bomb are a must-see for all Distributists, or for anyone who wants to think sanely about the human economy and the proximate future of civilization.

It's really difficult to sum up these two films. They're well-made documentaries polling the opinions of many scholars from a wide disciplinary background in order to contradict a myth that's been plaguing our culture in a particular way since Malthus and the Eugenics craze. The myth basically goes that the world is only so big, and what with better medicine and better resources and such, we're starting to crowd the place. Despite a well-publicized statistic that all of humanity could live with reasonable comfort within the confines of the state of Texas and maybe some land in neighboring parts, nevertheless the overpopulation idea still gets a lot of credence. Look at China's one-child policy.

In fact, please do look at China's one-child policy: its current state, that is. It's a Social Security nightmare. And it's not just China. In nearly every developed country, human beings are undercutting the necessary "breeding rate" of replacement (2.3 children per family) by a significant margin. In China's case, this margin - institutionalized - is a whole half deficit.

A simple tree chart would suffice to illustrate. A sustainable population depends on parents having children enough that the children are able to care for their parents in their old age while also raising families of their own. But in the industrialized nations of the world (and increasingly in underdeveloped nations, due to enforced policies of sterilization and the like, employed by the UN and other "aid" organizations), you have an aging population. Each four grandparents are represented, maybe, by only one grandchild. When the baby-boomers retire, the "bust" of the demographic cycle will have an inordinate demand of intergenerational sustainability placed on its shoulders. Social Security is only the tip of the iceberg. Medicare and Medicaid are huge vacuums that will continue to put the squeeze on the diminished working population.

Demographic Winter and its sequel aim to explain how this happened. They identify several factors - some of which are rather provocative, like the move of women to workplaces outside the home - as contributory to the decline in fertility.

Note, the movies aren't for the weak-minded or faint of heart. They're meant to sober and steel us for facing hard times; not to encourage or buck-up. After all, demographics isn't really so much a predictive science as a descriptive study. Most of the trends these folks observe are already in place and drawing to their inevitable conclusions. It will take generations to turn things around.

But knowing is half the battle. Hope is still available, but it remains where it could always and only be found: in the Gospel of Life. For those of us inspired by that Gospel and called to share it as light and salt for the earth, we would do well to know what challenges we face, to ascertain the dark corners to be illumined and the decaying entities to be preserved and seasoned with joy and vitality. Time is of the essence: learn the facts and use them: check out Demographic Winter.

Perceived Obsolescence: A Dental Diary

There I stood: in the dental care aisle of Big-Box Pharmacy Store. Been there lately? Amazing place. First of all, on coming in the door, you can easily note how all these places are set up remarkably similar. There're always women's products within eye-sight of the door, as well as seasonal products (shovels and pails and such in the summertime, Christmas decorations this time of year). The pharmacy, sbeing presumably the raison d'etre of the store, is of course always in the very back. You have to walk past all the other products to get there. There are food products, miscellaneous cheap technology (it seems to be one of the only places left where one can buy a portable CD player), cards, stationery and office gadgetry, and basic houseware-type stuff (light bulbs, hose connectors, weed killer).

The health stuff is all on one side of the main aisle. Usually somewhere in the middle is the dental care area.

So, there I stood, in the dental care aisle, looking at a wall of products. I didn't take time to count, but I think it reasonable to assume that there were about 25 different kinds of toothpaste and twice as many different varieties of toothbrush. I was in the market for a toothbrush.

Now, my last toothbrush was, by any consideration, a roaring success. I've had the same model multiple times now, and my experience is consistently excellent. It's just a good toothbrush, despite all of the advertising gimmicks. It looks like the Swiss Army Knife of toothbrushes, and might be priced about the same, but it's really that good. It has rubber edgy thingies that get your gumline, and a protruding nose of sort that ducks down behind the molars. It has a magical color change item that tells you when it's getting tired, and a tongue-washer on the back. Honestly, the tongue-washer I'm not too thrilled about. The bristles seem to do a better job on that essential task, even if that might somewhat reduce the life of the brush.

I should note here that I'm a yeoman when it comes to my routine in the washroom. I've admitted some technology to the process over the years. For example, I used an electric razor before I had a beard (now, I shave my neck the old-fashioned way, that is to say the "plastic blade-cartridge with moisturizing strip on the end of a battery-operated vibrating stick" sort of way). My shower and toilet are scrubbed by Elves who take the form of bubbles that are automatically dispensed after each use. But when it comes to the work of cleaning my mouth, I like to do the work myself. Although I'm intrigued by newfangled brushes that utilize sonic booms or whatever to blast the plaque off your teeth, and the spinny-jobbers and shaky-doodads that are becoming increasingly "affordable" (that is, to the consumer in the instant of purchase), I stick to the normal arm-operated brush.

Well, after much searching and bewilderment by the bright colors and variety of the display, I finally located my reliable brush in the fray. I was dismayed to find that I couldn't purchase a single unit, but only two-for-the-price-of-(slightly-more-than)-one. I've tried that before. It never works out. Invariably, I either lose the spare brush, or leave one at my parent's house so that I have it available when I travel and end up never using it, because it doesn't feel right and I'd need to run boiling water over it and I bring mine along anyway. If I manage to keep and not to lose the spare brush, I find that I am uncontrollably urged untimely to begin using it. Although my last brushing with each of these brushes is good on an objective scale, it must be admitted that nothing compares with the first time, when the bristles are brand new. And having one laying around that can provide such an experience is too great a temptation. I end up throwing my old one away before the magical color indicator tells me to, and travel back to the Big-Box Pharmacy within the same time frame that I would have done had I bought only one brush.

I didn't want to buy two toothbrushes. I only needed one. On the same level, hanging a few brushes away from my old faithful, was another brush. It was shiny. And it cost much less than the two brushes I knew to be excellent. They weren't shiny, but they were good. This new brush, on the other hand, was shiny. It caught my eye. I knew it was shiny - this was not a subconscious perception. I might have said aloud, had I had someone in the aisle with me (not necessarily someone with whom I'd traveled to the store, but just a fellow shopper) - I might well have said, "That's shiny." But there wasn't, so I didn't. But I did think to myself, "Well, just because it's shiny doesn't mean it won't be good." And I went the way of all flesh. I gave in. I submitted to the allure of shininess on which our whole modern consumerist state depends. And I have found like so many other shiny-consumers, that it seems very little which glitters anymore is gold.

The gimmick of my new brush (all brushes have a gimmick) is a grippy-spot. On the front and back of the brush, right around where it contorts between the handle and the bristles, is orange, bumpy grippy stuff in a little spot on one side and a big spot on the other side. Presumably the little spot is for the tip of the thumb and the big spot for the side of the index finger.

Last night, I used my old brush one last time in a sort of mournful decommissioning. The hazy blue indicator area made me think how true it is that "old soldiers never die, they just fade away."

I tried out my new brush this morning. The bristles perform well. It lacks something of the gum-sexing that the old brush offered, but I need to learn to floss better anyway and maybe this will motivate me, because I'll miss that tingly feeling. My new brush is annoying, though, in its gimmicky grippy-spot. I found that the rest of the handle of the brush seems to have been made deliberately slick and slippery in order the enhance the perceived benefit of the grippy-spot. I took my old brush from the top of the trash pail and felt the bottom of each handle. Sure enough, my new brush is remarkably less grip-able. The grippy-spot isn't an enhancement on a normally grip-able brush. But it's a gimmick, placed on a brush that has been manufactured to (outside of it's special place) be less grip-able than a normal brush. Perhaps someone will tell me that, for effective brushing, one ought to grip the indicated spot because it's on the pressure pivot of the brush and enables the best control and maneuverability. I say, hogwash! I do grip my brush in the proper place, but occasionally a repositioning or what-not is in order, and I want to be able to perform these tasks without the risk of dropping my brush in the sink and needing to boil the damned thing before I'm satisfied with its sanitation.

---

Anyway, I tell this story so as to invite a reflection on the role of perceived obsolescence in our consumerist culture. I think the principle - which, basically defined, means the creation of an impression on the part of the consumer that old stuff isn't good anymore and they need new stuff - is apparent in many ways in Big-Box Pharmacy Store. I think you can find it operating in many instances in the story: in the superabundance of dental care products in the aisle; in the technology-enhancements of toothbrushes to vibrate and make noise; in the psychology that operates on me when I have purchase two of the same brushes at the same time; in the grippy-spot being manufactured to seem more necessary by the compromise in the grippyness of the rest of the brush.

The concept of perceived obsolescence is an important one of which to be aware at any time, but especially in a season of heightened commercialism and consumerism like the month of Christmas. I hope my story serves in some way to illustrate how this principle can motivate us both without our knowing it (my "two-for-one" woes) or with our knowing it (my attraction to the shiny). I invite any further reflection anyone might have on the matter with another gentle reminded that this is, hopefully, a place for discussion.

Also, this would be a good time to remind everyone of my lexicon post from a while back. I'll be revising this soon to add some new terms, like perceived obsolescence. Since I sometimes do get technical around here, everyone should know that this post can be easily accessed at any time by clicking the Terms label in the sidebar. Should it seem necessary at a later date, I'll add a permanent link somewhere. For now, I'm trying to keep the sidebar tidy.

The Pope Worships Gaia!

... at least, such a headline would not be a stretch to approximating the sensationalism in the press over the Pope's recently released message for the 43rd World Day of Peace.

First of all, it's worth pointing out that this isn't anything new.

Secondly, LifeSiteNews.com, at least, has a good editorial on the matter. They allude to the noteworthy fact that the Pope's document remained largely unnoticed by the media until somebody had a slow news day and decided there was something to be sensationalized here.

Third, the document itself isn't anything earth-shattering. Or, rather, it isn't remarkably innovative. It's earth-shattering in the sense that the Gospel and its ministers are like fire upon the earth and always seem supersubstantial in contrast to the mundane truisms we encounter each day. But it isn't like the Pope is sounding a clarion call of liberalism or saying that, after all, maybe trees is people too.

No, this is the same sort of thing we've heard before, although I have to say I love more and more Benedict's style. His message for last year on this occasion, as well as this one, have a neat style of recapitulation where the "theme" becomes something like an affirmative command at the end.

There's really not much in the document to parse. You really ought to read it yourself - it isn't long. And hopefully, if anyone tells you that this should be best understood under some divisive hermeneutic between the real Benedict and his Marxist "handlers," you can tell 'em where to go. (No, no, I didn't mean there. Here.)

It is noteworthy that the Pope does not in the document explicitly mention anthropogenic global warming, per se. He speaks of an "ecological crisis," which can mean anything from the depletion of drinking water sources to overfishing to deforestation. He also condemns any policies or philosophies that "end up abolishing the distinctiveness and superior role of human beings."

From a Distributivist point of view, there are certain passages in the statement which warm the heart. My favorite is from paragraph five:

Prudence would thus dictate a profound, long-term review of our model of development, one which would take into consideration the meaning of the economy and its goals with an eye to correcting its malfunctions and misapplications. The ecological health of the planet calls for this, but it is also demanded by the cultural and moral crisis of humanity whose symptoms have for some time been evident in every part of the world. Humanity needs a profound cultural renewal; it needs to rediscover those values which can serve as the solid basis for building a brighter future for all. Our present crises – be they economic, food-related, environmental or social – are ultimately also moral crises, and all of them are interrelated. They require us to rethink the path which we are travelling together. Specifically, they call for a lifestyle marked by sobriety and solidarity, with new rules and forms of engagement, one which focuses confidently and courageously on strategies that actually work, while decisively rejecting those that have failed. Only in this way can the current crisis become an opportunity for discernment and new strategic planning [emphasis in original].

His holiness goes on to saliently observe that "the issue of environmental degradation challenges us to examine our life-style and the prevailing models of consumption and production, which are often unsustainable from a social, environmental and even economic point of view" [my emphasis]. This is a particularly important point for Distributists, who alone seem to be very cognizant of the economic imperative arising from legitimate sustainability concerns. Infinite wealth creation, or reliance upon price mechanisms rather than on changing and shaping values toward better stewardship, are ill-conceived plans by theoreticians who would view sustainability as a threat (see, for example, Tyler A. Watts, "Sustainaibility: An Assault on Economics" on Mises Daily).

I was also very pleased by the Holy Father's handling of the need for "intergenerational solidary," which he called for in his encyclical. This is a sort of late-comer onto the scene of Catholic Social Teaching, and has very profound economic implications, especially with a fiat currency, money-as-debt system fueling Western nations' economies. We're running future generations not only into an unsustainable position with regard to natural resources, but in terms of financial sustainability as well. This all ties in very well with some research I'm doing currently into the idea of a "demographic winter" - that the homes and resources being used up and required by the current aging population will leave us, 30 years down the road, in quite a predicament. We think there's a bad housing market now? Well, what will happen if people continue to conceive and bear children at such a severe deficit compared to their grand-parents' generation? What will happen when only a quarter of the number of people currently retired in Florida, for example, are set to retire in a future generation when all those folks have died? Only every fourth house may be occupied. Think that won't cause problems to banks on the mortgage front? And that's just one of many scenarios in which we face disaster in light of current demographic trends. Intergenerational solidarity is going to become increasingly important: but all this is a for a future post. I'll be reviewing the documentaries Demographic Winter and The Demographic Bomb in the days to come. So stay tuned.

In the meantime, if you haven't yet, go and check out the Pope's message and keep an eye out for these important economically relevant points. Of course, really, the whole thing is economically relevant - a fact which is, itself, a major point which the Holy Father is making: "economic activity needs to consider the fact that "every economic decision has a moral consequence'."

I'm sure there are plenty more points worthy of discussion that I haven't hit. Please come back to the combox and share them. I'll take this opportunity to reiterate that I want this to be a place of discussion. So, please, lend a hand!

The Distributist's Bookshelf: Peter Maurin's Easy Essays

Easy Essays by Peter Maurin. ♦♦♦ ♠ ♠ ♠ ♠
(Washington, DC: Rose Hill Books, 2003).
216pp.

“Peter’s teaching was simple, so simple, as one can see from these phrased paragraphs... that many disregarded them.”

- Dorothy Day

“[T]o create a new society within the shell of the old” – this was Peter Maurin’s aim. This was the goal he articulated for the Catholic Worker when, with Dorothy Day in 1933, he co-founded that movement and its publication.

Houses of Hospitality and Cooperative Farm Communes where the rule of life was the daily practice of the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy: this was his vision. It was a vision that changed many people’s lives, Dorothy Day being one of them. And, with her help, it was a vision that seemed at times as though it really might change the world. And it may yet.

But neither Peter’s goal of reconstructing the social order nor his vision of the shape of that new order within the shell of the old – neither of these was his real passion, the substance of his vocation. Peter’s love was doctrine. He was a born teacher. He loved conversation, although it doesn’t seem that you could say he loved debate per se. He didn’t pretend such sophistication. His goal in discussion was conversion. He wanted his interlocutor to see things his way. The thrill of the melding of two minds and the shining of the light of what he was convinced to be true on a darkened intellect – that was his muse.

He articulated in several places an antipathy for “technicians.” The average worker, skilled or unskilled, was a technician, a functionary. And scholars, too, were cogs in a wheel of academia. In the Houses of Hospitality, Peter wanted to foster an atmosphere where “Catholic scholars are dynamic and not academic and Catholic workers are scholars and not politicians.” He wanted a place where the ideas he embraced and propounded would find right soil, sink in, take root, grow and blossom. And the means of sowing this crop were his Easy Essays.

The essays are not quite prose. Nor could they properly be called poetry. They’re thought-capsules in a rudimentary form. They are a delivery system. There’s some pith and some ornamentation, but it never distracts. The goal in Maurin’s writing is clear: indoctrination. The point is hammered home, concisely and without conceit. There’s nothing to distract from the main goal. There’s none of the atmosphere of Dorothy’s writing, in which you can smell the dank apartment or the wet soil. Peter’s words are like pills to be swallowed in a gulp rather than savored. But they have in common with pills something other than the bland delivery mechanism: they give good medicine to the mind and soul.

It might seem a strange first choice for the Distributist Bookshelf to pick Peter Maurin’s aphoristic “essays.” But there is a wealth of good information contained in these brief locutions. In the background can be easily discerned the influence of Chesterton and Belloc, Gill and Pepler, Maritain and Mounier. But unfamiliarity with this background is no impedance to appreciating Maurin’s writings. His thoughts are crystal clear. No need to refer to footnotes or an encyclopedia.

Not all of Maurin’s advice will be practical for modern Distributists. People may take some exception to his “true communist” sympathies or his agrarian ideals. But Maurin is a great way to get in touch with the soul of Distributist philosophy. Aquinas and the Papal Social Teachings run like bright threads throughout the tapestry of his writing. These, like other themes, are generously repeated (or better, recapitulated), so that a few reads of his essays gives one a very good familiarity with the “spirit” of Distributistism. He holds personalism in tension with communitarianism, revolution in tension with tradition, idealism in tension with realism.

My favorite of Maurin's essay, and a good sample of his writing, is the one entitled “When Christ is King.”

In the essay, Maurin identifies himself as a "radical" and then distinguishes this from both "liberals" and "conservatives":

If I am a radical
then I am not a liberal.
(...)
Liberals are so liberal about everything
that they refuse to be fanatical
about anything.
And not being able to be fanatical
about anything,
liberals cannot be liberators.
They can only be liberals.

(...)

If I am a radical,
then I am not a conservative.
Conservatives try to believe
that things are good enough
to be left alone.
But things are not good enough
to be left alone.
(...)
And conservatives do not know
how to take the upside down
and to put it right side up.
When conservatives and radicals
will come to an understanding
they will take the upside down
and they will put it right side up.

Maurin wants radical change, and notes the difference that this implies with other ideologies. Conservatives want no change. Liberals' New Deal is merely a "patching up." Socialists and Communists want a change that can't really be.

Maurin wants to "change from an acquisitive society / to a functional society, / from a society of go-getters / to a society of go-givers."

A society of go-givers. Where have we heard that before? Sounds like certain amounts of gratuitousness would be involved in such a society, at least it sounds that way to me.

The Easy Essays of Peter Maurin are too-little appreciated today. As we try to find a way to make the wisdom of the great lights of Personalist and Distributist thought accessible to all of society, the summations of Peter Maurin can be a great aid. Many workers were made scholars sitting at that man's feet. And much more important, they were probably made saints almost as often.

The way to reconstructing the social order isn't through welfare programs or stimulus packages, nor through liberated market mechanisms paying heed to no extrinsic value or meaning. The social order will change when men are changed: when they are made saints who love the good, and scholars who love the true.

Pick up a copy of Maurin's Easy Essays and put it on your Distributist shelf today. His ideas just might change you. And through you, they may - even in a little way - change the world.