[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The economy isn't everything

[Bill Totten]

by Grace Lee Boggs

The Michigan Citizen (October 19 2008)


In these times of economic meltdown, when so many of us are losing our
homes and our jobs and agonizing about how to pay our bills, the
conventional wisdom is to insist that the economy is everything, and
that you're stupid if you don't agree.

That is why I'd like to share the email about the Dow that I received
this week from my friend, Rosa Naparstek, who used to live in Detroit
and now lives in New York. Rosa is an artist who helps us liberate our
imaginations from the dominant culture and get to our human essence. In
August she gave a very moving slide show presentation of her artwork at
the Boggs Center. She called it "Childscapes" because it revealed how
our inner landscapes form the emotional roots of the world we create
personally and politically.

In this email about the Dow, Rosa reminds us that life isn't only about
the economy. We are, first and foremost, human beings who down through
the ages have created our way of life according to who and what we are.
Until the onset of capitalism only a few centuries ago, our
relationships with one another and our communities, not the rapid growth
of the economy, were what we valued. The current crisis provides us with
the opportunity to reclaim those fundamental human values.

"Last week", her email begins, "my sister and I went to Ellis Island ,
the portal of our entry into the United States in 1951. I remember
standing on deck at the railing, holding my father's hand and cheering
at the sight of the statue and land. I knew we had arrived for a new
life and home.

"My father was a socialist who brought me up to respect labor and
recognize that capitalism was an exploitative form of human
relationships. He was a scholar and also by trade an 'upper maker' (the
top part of the shoe) who worked at Henry Ford's cutting upholstery. My
mother worked there too, sewing the upholstery. She had been a
seamstress. He wanted to teach me how to make shoes so that I could
always earn a living. I told him I didn't need to; that I would go to
college and be safe.

"Now, after many professions, I find myself gathering things, the fruit
of human labor, to put together in a form that honors the story behind
them so that I too can finally say I have made something with my hands.

"We are at an interesting juncture. The sky is falling. Crisis, danger
and opportunity are palpable. Evolution takes a long time, but emergent
realities can sometimes break through.

"Many celebrated when 'communism' failed in what seemed 'not with a
bang, but a whimper'. We won, we won! And now, who will say forthrightly
that capitalism, unfettered markets and unaccountable profits, have
failed, bringing us down with a global bang?

"As much as I read and have read about economics now and in the past, I
feel most of what we say about it is fiction. We do not live the truths
in each theory. We live and create from the truth of who and what we are.

"Socialism and communism are spiritual economic systems: to give
according to our abilities and receive according to our needs. And, the
final stage, the withering away of the state, is the stage when we no
longer need external rules or laws because we have become our best and
highest selves, and are unafraid to know that we are all one.

"Laissez faire also has its theoretical validity, a belief in personal
freedom, which after all is also the highest goal of 'the withering away
of the state'. However, personal freedom unmoored from spiritual
development can become greed and ruthless disregard of the other and the
best in ourselves.

"We can create an economy of caring and sharing and cooperating. The
land is still here. The people, hands, minds are still here. It is an
affair of the heart, giving and receiving."

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