HomeGood morning!
I was driving around my town the other day when I noticed the huge number of houses that were being torn down to make way for new, really large, three and four car garage houses. A few interesting points about the houses being torn down: First, they were built in the nineteen fifties and ‘sixties, so they are only forty or fifty years old, which I consider to be fairly new (I live in an eighty two year old house). Second, when they were build forty or fifty years ago, they were considered to be good sized houses; they were homes to corporate executives, movie stars, television stars…
And I thought to myself: There are the tax cuts at work. And it is true. People with a lot of money now have more money and they are spending it on things like big houses, which means they are hiring construction companies and therefore people jobs.
But I also remembered the report published by the federal government stating that hunger in the lower economic stratum in this country was deeper than it was a few years ago; and I thought to myself, that also is the tax cuts at work.
Who gets to decide whether something “works”?
As many of you know, I have a number of bird feeders in my yard, and I have noted that different species of birds eat their food in different ways. That is, they approach the distribution of resources in a variety of ways. This got me to thinking about human economics and social structures.
Goldfinches, house sparrow, house finches—these birds fly to a perch on a feeder and sit there eating their fill until they have had enough or until someone else, tired of waiting knocks them off their perch. That is the self-reliant or laissez-faire capitalist approach; think of the Robber Barons of the late 1800’s.
Chickadees, tufted titmice, white breasted nuthatches—these guys fly to the feeder, pick out the seed they want—usually a sunflower seed—and then fly off to a nearby branch to eat it. This is an equal opportunity or fair access approach, the kind of thing government attempts to ensure with anti-monopolistic legislation, regulations against insider trading and other fair trade practices.
Cedar waxwings have been seen to sit in a row on the branch of a tree with the one nearest to a cluster of fruit picking one piece and passing it down the line of birds. Everyone who is on the branch gets to eat. That kind of shared resource approach lies behind our highway system or our social security—everyone who can get to the branch gets to share in the resources. But you need to be able to get to the branch in order to share. So you need a car to use the highway system or a job from which you paid into the social security system in order to benefit from them.
Only a few creatures engage in caretaking or nurturing, where members of a group bring food back to those who are not able to get it for themselves, either because they did not find food or because they are too sick to do so. (I am excluding here taking care of offspring, which is much more commonly practiced.) Among the species that engage in caretaking are hive creatures like ants, bees, termites and naked mole rats; and a few other mammals: humans, African wild dogs and vampire bats. Caretaking, of course, is equivalent to the various components of the welfare state: public schools, housing and food subsidies, Medicare and Medicaid, and other such universal programs.
In the wild each of these resource distribution systems is an evolutionary development, and each one “works”. That is an important point. Each one “works”, the laissez-faire, the equal opportunity, the fair share and the caretaking approach each aids the survival of the species that uses it. How do we know that is so? Because each exists. If any one of those approaches was objectively better suited to survival, then over the course of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of years natural selection would eliminate the less successful systems. They all exist, ergo, they all work and have approximately the same level of success; at least, on the level of the species.
I have been thinking—conjecturing, really—about the survival value of each.
Again, the survival value has to do with the species, not so much with the individual, though these often interact. In a bee hive, for example, the hive is better served and more likely to survive if worker bees are willing to sacrifice their lives for the greater whole. So the survival that I am thinking about is the survival on the level of the group.
One of the things to stipulate in thinking about survival in this way is that conditions constantly change. Where there may be an abundance of food one day, or one month or one year, there may be a major shortage the next. Different survival mechanism will develop to meet this contingency. If there is a severe enough famine, then all creatures will die and it doesn’t matter which system you use.
Consider a circumstance where there is a shortage of some duration, but not enough to wipe out the entire group.
For the birds that sit on the perch and gorge themselves (I dub this the “self-reliance” approach), this method ensures that the strongest members of the flock will survive. Depending upon how severe the food shortage is, lesser strengthed members will survive as well but the weakest will die. Now one advantage here for the flock in that the surviving group will, as a whole, be even stronger than the group that existed prior to the shortage. And if the shortage is such that only a small number would be able to survive, this method ensures that it is the strongest that do. So that seems to explain the use of that process. It is the one that best ensures group survival.
But then, why do other species use a different strategy? There must be some survival benefit for the species in doing so.
The birds that grab what they need in the moment and then vacate the perch leaving an opening for another bird have an approach that may ensure the survival of a greater number of the flock. Instead of the strongest gorging themselves while weaker members die, everyone who is able to get to the feeder has at least some amount of food.
If there is a shortage in which there is only sufficient food for ten members of the flock to survive, then the first method is the better one to use. However, if there is enough food for, say, twenty-five birds to survive--on limited rations--then twenty five of the equal opportunity group will live but only ten of the self-reliant group will, though the latter may be stronger in the immediate aftermath of the shortage and the other group will need some time to regain strength.
Still, the equal opportunity group will probably have a broader genetic pool within its surviving members, and therefore will be much more likely to survive future changes in environment.
And note, in the first group, the strongest have survived, but that is only the physically strongest. There is no necessary connection between physical strength and other important and beneficial characteristics such as intelligence, immunity to disease or reproductive capability. Think of a species in which the ten strongest were all males. Barring the ability to change gender, which does exist in some species of living things, this might be a group doomed to extinction.
The point is that each system, though it has its failings, works. Two questions then:
1. Which of these would you prefer to live under? I leave that question to you to answer for yourself.
2. Which of these does religion call us to practice? That is, which does God, the divine or our highest principles (not our desires) call us to?
That question is too broad to answer in any specific way. The real question is what the general message of religion is. Beginning with the axial age of about 500 to 600 B.C., religion around the world has been infused with a strain of compassion which has called upon humanity to care for the widows and orphans, to show concern for the poor and despised, to be like the Good Samaritan who cares for the stranger. Confucius in China, Buddha in India, Amos and Isaiah in Israel, all called for greater service to the neighbor.
That is, religion added the third pillar of what today is modern religion. What is the purpose of religion: should it be to make me feel Good, should it make me be Good or should it make me do Good. That is, should religion give me the strength and courage I need to face life as it is; should religion cause me to be a better person, a better parent, child, employee, or employer; or should it cause me to engage in acts of social service and social justice? Among our differences is how much of each of those belongs in religion.
Prior to, most religious commands were in negative (don’t kill, steal, covet) or were about recompense (ox eats neighbors crop, pay for)
Now, there was a shift; there was seen to be a positive obligation to help one’s neighbor. Many scholars believe that this happened because humanity had moved away from living in small villages where rich and poor lived next to one another, knew one another and might be related to one another, to living in a more complex society where different economic classes lived in economically segregated neighborhoods, much as we do today. So the poor became unknown, became nameless and faceless, and were therefore being ignored.
This new religious approach was not only a call for individual action; it was a call for societal action. Confucius, in fact, aimed his message at the rulers of states.
Is there an economic approach that is more religious, more spiritual, or more moral than others? Which is it, what policies would bring it into being, and what does creating it call upon both us and you to do?
I believe that the welfare state we have been dismantling is the most moral system we have developed, and we have replaced it only with neglect.
An additional set of questions to ponder: What kind of congregation shall we be, one in which individuals seek to gorge themselves on services offered or one in which individuals seek to help each other in their journeys towards spiritual growth? We do pretty well with the latter. What are the ways in which you can make this place even more nurturing and supportive for everyone?
The process of “gorging” can manifest in a congregation as “let’s not let anyone else know what we have here or they will want to share and we don’t want to share”; nurturing congregations are open to having others join.
How shall I be in the congregation? What kind of bird? Will I gorge myself, or share but only with those here, or nurture others and those not yet here.
Unlike birds, we can choose how to be, both individually and as a group.
What am I called to be; what am I called to do both here and elsewhere? Am I called to feel good only; to both feel and be good; or to feel and be and do good?
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