Debt, time, [and the new] wealth

Here is an extended quote from Franco Berardi’s The Soul at Work,

The postmodern domination of capitalism is founded on the refrain of wealth, understood as cumulative possession.  A specific idea of wealth took control of the collective mind which values accumulation and the consent of the postponing of pleasurable enjoyment.  But this idea of wealth (specific to the sad science of economics) transforms life into lack, need and dependence.  To this idea of wealth we need to oppose another idea: wealth as time – time to enjoy, to travel, learn and make love.

Economic submission, producing need and lack, makes our time dependent, transforming our life into a meaningless run towards nothing.  Indebtedness is the basis of this refrain.

In 2006, the book Generation Debt (subtitled: Why now is a terrible time to be young) was published in the United States.  The author, Anya Kamenetz considers a question that finally came to the forefront of our collective attention in 2007, but has been fundamental to capitalism for a long time: debt.

Anya Kamenttz’s analysis refers especially to young people taking out loans in order to study.  For them, debt functions like a symbolic chain whose effects are more powerful than the real metal chains formerly used in slavery.

This new model of subjugation goes through a cycle of capture, illusion, psychological submission, financial trap and finally pure and simple obligation to work.

. . .

Our young fellow signs the loan, goes to university and graduates: after that, his/her life belongs to the bank.  S/he will have to start work immediately after graduation, in order to pay back a never ending amount of money. . . . S/he will have to accept any condition of work, any exploitation, any humiliation, in order to pay the loan which follows her wherever s/he goes.

Debt is the creation of of obsessive refrains that are imposed on the collective mind.  Refrains impose psychological misery thanks to the ghost of wealth, destroying time in order to transform it into economic value.  The aesthetic therapy we need – an aesthetic therapy that will be the politics of the time to come – consists in the creation of dissipating refrains capable of giving light to another modality of wealth, understood as time for pleasure and enjoyment.

The crisis that began in the summer of 2007 has opened a new scene: the very idea of social relation as ‘debt’ is now crumbling apart.

The anti-capitalist movement of the future won’t be a movement of the poor, but of the wealthy.  The real wealthy of the future will be those who will succeed in creating forms of autonomous consumption, mental models of need reduction, habitat models for the sharing of indispensable resources.  This requires the creation of dissipative wealth refrains, or of frugal and ascetic wealth.

in the virtualized model of semiocapitalism, debt worked as a general frame of investment, but it also became a cage for desire, transforming desire into lack, need and dependency that is carried for life.

Finding a way out of such a dependency is a political task whose realization is not a task for politicians.  It’s a task for art, modulating and orienting desire, and mixing libidinal flows.  It is also a task for therapy, understood as a new focalization of attention, and a shifting of the investments of desiring energy.

Nourishing an Impoverished Theology

Over at AUFS another lacerating post and comment thread has been levelled against possible symptomatic trends in theology that divert attention from the ‘flesh and blood’ powers that actually affect people (the target this time is a post by Ben Myers).  I particularly appreciate the description of powers as flesh and blood.  I am becoming increasingly convinced of the need to teach and demonstrate the practice of description, a phenomenology of sorts.  This position is not incompatible with a discursive interpretation of situations but it demands an account of how discourse is constructed.  If we move simply from discourse to discourse we begin trading in unreliable fictions which is how I understand APS’s critique of Myers’s post.  This was a feeling I also got from Myers’s earlier post on writing.  The sentiments were pleasantly structured but they never seemed to ‘touch down’ (this of course being a personal response unformulated as a criticism at the time).  I suspect I am entering theoretical waters I am unable to swim in but I want to work out at least this thought.

What we are doing in theology or any other discipline or perspective may be the manufacturing, editing and recycling of discourses but this does not mean there is no evaluation and no resources outside of discourse.  The trouble with theology tends to be something like a multi-layered discourse on incarnation without someone’s flesh touching fire, experiencing ecstasy, or willfully sacrificing.  In this way theological discourse becomes a layering and protecting of nothing; and so an engagement with nothing but postures and prose.  APS called Myers out on this and demanded that if he look (at least in Europe) one will find matters quit to the contrary.  Theologians do indeed need to step back and simply look at what is going on around them and describe it, not as though they will arrive at some homogenous neutral view but that they become engaged in flesh and blood.  And here APS’s response also falls short (as all descriptions do).  In his description there is no account for ‘progress’ under right-wing policy.  If someone would come to Winnipeg’s West End and ask about Harry Lehotsky you would soon be inundated with stories of man whose vision of dignity and quality of life for a forsaken community changed countless lives and all this based on a right-wing approach to government and economics that was the result of repeated frustrations with left-wing approaches to social support.  In this description I make no meta claims about economics only that a man engaged the flesh and blood powers of oppression found tools more readily available under a right-wing government (this description of course needs to be contextualized within the Canadian context and historical which greatly affects its possible transferability).  In any event I struggle with over the top claims like the ones made by APS.  I take them to heart as a theologian or Christian (as I have become increasingly grateful for the overall contribution many of the folks at AUFS make) because they are needed but then his post must be further problematized or at least nuanced because of the varied stories of engagement.  An apparent global perspective does not trump and cannot trump a local engagement with flesh and blood.  This, again, should not be read as an attempt to overturn APS’s post but simply to add description which may allow resonance with others for getting on in the task of ‘progress’.

Money Mart, Money Fart

Since Winnipeg has experienced an exceptionally warm October (still cracking double digits!) I have tended to wander a little outside during my lunch break.  Yesterday I walked into small corner store.  The sign on the front said 25% off and they were doing work outside so I assumed they were closing down or making some changes.  As I walked in I saw a new counter roughed-out with some other renovations underway.  I am always excited to hear about new ventures and businesses starting up in the downtown area so I asked what was happening.  The man behind the counter, reading a magazine, barely looked at me and responded by saying he thought a Money Mart was coming in.  Money Mart has been described by others as legal loan sharking.  Basically a Money Mart exists to exploit those desperate for money who should not have money lent to them through traditional means.  In fact an ongoing court case has accused Money Mart of charging literally criminal interest rates which exceed 60%.  All this to say that my heart sank when I heard him utter those words.

But, but, but I need money now for my cell phone contract, to get my cable hooked up, to score a little something-something tonight.

These people will refuse almost no one the opportunity of feeling, smelling, and touching actual cash.  You can go in and come out with cash.  You can come out with the most the valuable object in our society, well almost the most valuable, perhaps the second most valuable.  Cash is nothing if not integrated into a complex of power made up by human beings.  The most valuable object then is that mechanism which puts you most directly in control of the human-complex.  Wealth is that which another does not have.  The equation of wealth then must include the variables of human beings.  Money Mart literally gives you less then it takes.  It gives you cash and takes control.  So to reduce the exchange it is accurate to simply say that it takes.  Is this the definition of power?  Is this the definition of rape?  But we would rather be raped then be denied access to the game that is established for the very purpose of abusing us (consumerism).  So cash is not valuable.  Cash is simply that which allows us to role the dice one more time hoping we will hit a ladder and not a snake without even knowing if there is anything at the top.  We know no other game . . . this appear to be life for us.

The Kingdom of the World is Like a UFC Event

I got to thinking about the use of mixed martial arts as a metaphor for Christ (see below).  It led me to another parable.

The Kingdom of the World is like a UFC event.  At the center of this event are two men who believe they are alone.  Two men who believe they fight only each other.  Two men who believe, at that moment, they can determine their worth.  But the cage is not sealed.  The ring is completely open on the top and the cage is meshed, porous, so that their bodies generate a flow of capital from fans to owners.  And what is more the two men are not even physically alone, a referee is present.  The primary aim of the referee is not to enforce rules of protection but to enact rules of excitement.  If the men appear stalled one pinned against the other on the cage then the ref yells, ‘Work!’  If one man is pinned on top of the other but there is insufficient thrusting and thrashing the ref yells, ‘Work!’  And if these commands are not heeded he breaks them apart or stands them up so that fresh contact is made.  And throughout each event a carrot dangles over each match so that one fighter may gain the ‘fight of the night’ bonus.  Fight of the night is what proves most exciting, most beneficial to the economic viability of their contact.

The two men are anything but alone.  The two men have little determination in that space.  They were brought together by another, trained by another, paid by another, ruled by another, cheered by another.  Their bodies though cannot be substituted.  Their must be a blood sacrifice to lubricate the flow of wealth.

The event is a show of power for the sake of masking power.  People watch the idols of muscle who wear on their shirts and trunks painted symbols of power but invisible men stand behind it all who reap the gate receipts and the merchandise sales and the booze consumed.  These invisible men flex infinitely more powerful muscle as they contract fighters, contract overseas labour for merchandise, and lean on addiction and illusions to sell tickets.  We do not see any who actually profit.  And in all this the two men cannot determine their ethical presence because they have already submitted to another, all choices are now played out in terms they did not create.

The Kingdom of the World is not ethical.  There are no ethics in this Kingdom.  Any ethical act of necessity breaks with this Kingdom even if for a moment.  To live ethically we will still live in cages but we must know and live with the truth that it is possible to walk through walls.  We cannot tear down the cage for it is always being created and always will be created but we we can pass through its limits.  This is faith.

Following the Kick-Ass Jesus; Or, Caged Faith

I was recently made aware of what should be an unsurprising website Jesus Didn’t Tap.

Jesus Didn’t Tap was one of the first Christian based MMA clothing companies to hit the scene. In the sport of Mixed Martial Arts, to “tap” is to quit or give up. The message of the Jesus Didn’t Tap line is that Jesus didn’t quit after going through unimaginable suffering and pain when he was crucified on the cross. The company aims to represent both the competitiveness of MMA and honoring God in all of their designs and hopes it will help spread the Christian message of salvation to a whole new audience. (from the website)

This is unsurprising and, for me, now a surprisingly clear example of heretical faith.  It is not heretical because it is ridiculous.  It is heretical because it believes that faith can be expressed analogically.  I will briefly qualify that statement by saying that I am unqualified to speak about ‘analogy’ as it is used in systematic theology and so these comments may or may not relate to a larger discussion.  My observation is simple.  Faith cannot be analogical because faith cannot be reduced from entirety into examples of totality.  This website reflects a belief that the ‘kernel’ of faith can be translated into the medium of fighting.  As a sport I actually have a relatively high regard for certain forms of MMA but this is viewed from a larger complex of social, ethical and personal perspectives.  What is at issue is the belief that you can ‘close’ the door of cage and function faithfully and independently within a confined space.  This is not a new insight but it is claiming more ground in how I view faithfulness.  This is how I would understand the word ‘piety’ as it used by folks at AUFS and also Hauerwas’s criticism of American as too ‘spiritual’.  Piety or spiritualism reflect those actions and postures which assume some effectiveness despite the realities of a larger context.  As it is Thanksgiving in Canada ‘piety’ might mean thanking God for a prosperity that comes at the direct cost of others without the means to object.  It is an act isolated from its relations.

I do not have the book on hand but Kierkegaard in his preface to The Sickness Unto Death speaks of faith as that which fearlessly encounters all of life.  In this way I have become much more receptive to ‘secular’ and ‘materialist’ expressions that attempt to thoroughly examine the functions at play in religion and culture (a critique of ideology it is often called).  To the extent that an expression distracts or insulates from an identifiable aspect of life it must be deemed unfaithful because it rejects the basic theological premise that the whole earth is full of God’s glory.  The basic posture of the Christian must remain to see, to hear, to feel, to taste, to smell.  This connects to the reason I began a new blog.  The hope was to learn the discipline of description.  I am not sure how I feel about the idea of accuracy in description (and I certainly reject any notion of neutrality) only that we tend to go through our days bypassing the basic acknowledgment and engagement with our senses.  Our mind already has enough patterns to live by assumption and guesswork and not take the time to recognize the utter uniqueness of everything (a bit grand of a statement I suppose).  So when I see examples like the one above I am reminded not of how ridiculous they are but of how tempting it is to cage faith in containable expressions allowing other forces free play in the ‘real world’ the one in which people live, breath and die; the one fallen and full of the glory of God.

I came across this quote from the website as though it was looking to enhance my point.

When Jesus stepped inside the cage of life to take on the cross, human legs did not kicked his out from under him. It was not human hands that broke his arm during the arm bar of adversity. It was not a human fist that knocked him to the mat for our sins. It was not a human that kept him inside the triangle choke of suffering. It was not the fighter’s sent by Satan to tap him out that beat him.

God gave him strength while on his back being pounded in the face by the elbows of sin. Those same hands that formed the universe. Those same hands that held you and me before the foundation of the world.

Take a jog out to the mountain of the skull. Out to the cross where, with holy blood, the hand that placed you on the planet wrote the promise, “God would give up his only Son before he’d Tap Out on you.

Truly, Jesus Didn’t Tap! – Are you tapping out on him?

Spiritual Mastery

Economic activity constantly seeks to transcend itself, not only by extending its domain into the artistic realm, but also in exertion within its own proper sphere, in its own inner dynamic.  It is striving to become not only one sphere of life, but the only on, or the ultimately definitive one, recognising no extra-economic or supra-economic court of appeal.  The result is economism as a fundamental perception of the world, a world-view.  Its class expression is ‘economic materialism’, a many-faced and many-faceted phenomenon, although it has come to be associated with the name of one its boldest exponents, Karl Marx.  Man is aware of his being in the world only as an economic subject (economic man, homo economicus), for whom economic activity is pure commercialism: economic instinct or egoism is laid down as the foundation of life itself.  This egoism is simply the pure manifestation of the universal, metaphysical egoism of creation as a whole.  Economic activity founded upon egoism in inevitably afflicted by disharmony and strife, personal and communal (‘class war’), and there is no possibility of any ultimate harmonising of this economic egoism which would lead it towards the ‘solidarity’ of which socialist thinking makes so much.  Economic egoism is an elemental force which is in need of regulation, both external and internal (spiritual and ascetical); left to itself, liberated from all restraint, it becomes a destructive power.  Where economics is concerned, it is just as wrong to turn away from it in disgust as to be enslaved by its concerns. Economic labour is imposed upon us as a penalty for sin, and we are bound to see it as a duty [obedience] laid upon all mankind.  There is nothing common between fastidious aristocratic distaste for economic activity and that freedom from economic concern which the gospel enjoins: this freedom aims not at neglect or contempt but at spiritual mastery.

– The Unfading Light; Sergii Bulgakov (1917)

I have not ventured far into Bulgakov but I am intrigued and hopeful in his earthy and fleshly spirituality and how it engages the world; the practice of spiritual mastery (as if I needed incentive to read more turn of the century Russian authors).

Sanctify

As I prepared for my sermon last Sunday I found myself using the word ‘sanctify’ to express where I felt the text and the trajectory of my sermon heading.  This surprised me somewhat.  I was exploring the use of word ‘delight’ (delight yourself in the LORD; Ps 37) in other contexts in the Old Testament.  In nearly every instance the term was directly accompanied with images of abundance and often of feasting.  The trouble of course is that the larger contexts of these passages often dealt with the poverty that people were experiencing at a given time.  While it may be legitimate in some passages to speak of a not yet that is gestured towards I was hesitant to reduce the present implications of these passages to an attitude that will help us in our impoverished state.  It seems that if we affirm the goodness of creation and also affirm the abundance that is possible through delighting in the LORD then the two should be related.  This led me to the term ‘sanctify’.  This means that the material aspects of our context remain paramount and are indeed actually transformed in faithful acting; that a material context once impoverished becomes abundant in real and engaging sense.  This may well be related to a spiritual sensing (eyes to see and ears to hear) but what does not get emphasized enough is that these remain sensing; they remain in the sensual realm of touch and taste.

These are just inklings of what emerged from sermon prep.  They relate to my larger theological reconstruction of priesthood that I hope to find renewed time and energy to flesh out.