Immaterial World

Michael Gerson:

Recessions and depressions are brutal beasts that stalk the stragglers, especially retirees and the poor. There is too much inherent suffering during a recession to ever welcome it. But times of economic stress, it appears, can also be times of cultural renewal. "One reasonable hypothesis," argues James Q. Wilson, "is that the Depression pulled families together, and this cohesion inhibited crime." Many Americans who struggled through the Depression adopted a set of moral and economic habits such as thrift, family commitment, savings and modest consumption that lasted through their lifetimes -- and that have decayed in our own. The Depression generation controlled the things it could control -- including its own consumption and character. We see hints of this type of reaction to our current recession, which has such clearly moral causes -- the burst of a bubble inflated by irresponsible debt, consumerism and unaccountable risk-taking. During an economic crisis, Americans return to a language of morality. Perhaps excess and recklessness are vices that deserve social stigma. Perhaps frugality and prudence are personal virtues as well as practices that prevent economic collapse. Perhaps there is a distinction between securing our needs and being dominated by our wants. It would be difficult for me to recommend asceticism, writing on my miraculous MacBook. But many Americans in this downturn seem to be finding that less costly entertainments such as family time are the most rewarding, that meals at gourmet restaurants are not always the most satisfying and that previously outsourced chores -- from landscaping to parenting to hair dyeing -- might be better performed themselves. (In commenting on this trend to the New York Times, however, one hairstylist cautions, "They do come in sometimes with some pretty orange hair.") Suspicions about consumerism are being powerfully reinforced by economic realities along with environmental concerns. But the rejection of materialism is finally rooted in a spiritual view of human nature. Pope John Paul II warned of making "people slaves of 'possession' and of immediate gratification, with no other horizon than the multiplication or continual replacement of the things already owned with others still better." A less material orientation in life (assuming basic material needs are met) actually expands our horizons -- like an escape from the dungeon of our own desires. It has always been a quiet fear of capitalists that the success of free markets would eventually undermine the moral basis for free markets -- that decadent prosperity would dissolve values such as prudence and delayed gratification. "Capitalism," argued economist Joseph Schumpeter, "creates a critical frame of mind which, after having destroyed the moral authority of so many other institutions, in the end turns against its own." But capitalism may be self-correcting in this area, as it is in many others. A recession causes suffering that can overwhelm hope. It can also lead to the rediscovery of virtues that make sustained prosperity possible -- and that add nonmaterial richness to our lives. Sometimes grace can arrive through an unexpected door.

By citing Schumpeter, Gerson lets capitalists off a bit easy. While Schumpeter's "quiet fears" are more relevant than ever, there are important differences between the school he represents and today's breed of capitalists. Robert McTeer, then head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, shared his quiet fear in 2001: "If we all join hands and go buy a new SUV, everything will be all right...Just go out and buy something -- maybe a Navigator." Richard Fisher, his successor, said in a television interview in 2005:

Where would the world be if Americans did not live out their proclivity to consume everything that looks good, feels good, sounds good, tastes good? We provide a service for the rest of the world. If we were running a current account surplus or trade surplus, what would happen to economic growth worldwide and what would be the economic consequences? So I think we are doing our duty there.

Does it sound like McTeer and Fisher worried that "decadent prosperity would dissolve values such as prudence and delayed gratification"? That top officials at the Fed represent today's breed of capitalists is an important issue in itself.

During the Bush years, I often wondered how many on the Religious Right understood the irony in supporting an administration that unabashedly promoted an almost demonic obsession with the material world (Bush: "Go shopping"). Gerson embraces the effects of natural downturns in the economic cycle: cultural renewal, thrift, family commitment, savings, morality, frugality, and prudence. It appears some -- and I don't mean Gerson necessarily -- are rediscovering the importance of those things, and justifiably objecting to Washington's extraordinary economic measures as symbols of opposite values. Strangely, that rediscovery seems to have started in early November.