Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast
“Is It Good to be the King?”
Rev. Rod Debs
May 29, 2005
Readings: “I would rather store money in the stomachs of the poor than in a purse.” (St. Jerome)
“Just wage (is not to be determined by the) haggling of the market (but by) a considered judgment that looked to the good of the worker and of society as a whole.” (St. Thomas Aquinas)
Message: Do you remember that line from the Mel Brooks movie, “The History of the World”—The lecherous French King (Mel Brooks) has just coerced sexual submission from a peasant maiden in exchange for release of her imprisoned father. The maiden is overwrought by her father’s arbitrary imprisonment and resigns herself to sexual violation by the King. That’s when the King turns to the camera, close up and says: “It’s good to be da king!”
Is it good to be the king? Are wealth and fame and subsequent social power, good?
The Tao Te Ching: “Amass a store of gold and jade, and no one can protect it. Claim wealth and titles, and disaster will follow. . . . Fame or self: Which matters more? Self or wealth? Which is more precious? Gain or loss: Which is more painful? He who is attached to things will suffer much. He who saves will suffer heavy loss.” (“How Much Do We Deserve?” Richard S. Gilbert, 2001, p.4)
The predicament of prosperity is something you and I deal with every day. Which matters more, wealth and fame or mutual community of self with others? Could it be that gain is as painful as loss? Is it possible that wealth and social status corrupt our lives? It could be that material wealth and the social wealth are the most difficult burdens that you and I bear. I’m guessing that my income puts me in the upper 40% in this nation and the top 5%, at least, of the wealthy of the world. Yes, I struggle with the predicament of prosperity.
Mahatma Gandhi wrote: “(Humans) are equal. For, though they are not of the same age, same height, the same skin and the same intellect, these inequalities are temporary and superficial. The soul that is hidden beneath this earthly crust is one and the same for all men and women belonging to all climes. . . . The word `inequality’ has a bad odour to it, and it has led to arrogance and inhumanities, both in East and West.” (p.2)
Gandhi recognized and promoted a sense of unity and solidarity and empathy among us all as having one and the same soul. Speaking of wealth, Gandhi declared: “I suggest we are thieves in a way. If I take anything that I do not need for my own immediate use, and keep it, I thieve it from somebody else. . . . You and I have no right to anything that we really have until these three million are clothed and fed better. You and I, who ought to know better, must adjust our wants. . . in order that they may be nursed, fed and clothed. . . . There is enough wealth to meet everyone’s need, but not everyone’s greed.” (p.2-3)
Countless sages have shared the same wisdom that wealth is to be held as the public good. The Greek Lycias wrote: “All fortune, good and bad, is to be shared in common by the community as a whole.” (p.9) St.Thomas Aquinas wrote in his “Summa Theologica”: “All material riches belong in common to the whole human race.” (p.10) He also wrote: “Abundance is due, by natural law, to the purpose of succoring the poor.” (p.10) “It is the hungry man’s bread that you withhold, the naked man’s cloak that you store away, the money that you bury in the earth is the price of the poor man’s ransom and freedom.” (p.11) “One cannot overabound in external riches without another lacking them.” (p.11)
Pope John Paul II added his voice on behalf of the common good when on visit to Canada he declared: “The needs of the poor take priority over the desires of the rich; the rights of workers over the maximization of profits; the preservation of the environment over uncontrolled industrial expansion, production to meet social needs over production for military purposes.” (p.13)
In ”The Federalist Papers” James Madison wrote: “The public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object.” (p.126) The Declaration of Independence was modeled after the words of John Locke who affirmed the values of “life, liberty and property.” But instead of “property,” our Declaration of Independence makes a substitution for the term, articulating instead Americans’ right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” (p.125) Wealth of private property was explicitly replaced by happiness, a public good. The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution promotes the value of community with the words: “We, the people,” seeking “a more perfect union” and the “general welfare.” Our founders’ provisions for the public good were presented as that necessary context for humans to attain happiness.
In 1630, aboard the “Arabella,” John Winthrop preached our communal spirit in these words: “For it is a true rule that particular estates cannot subsist in the ruin of the public. . . . we must be knit together in this work as one man. . . . we must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. . . . We must delight in each other, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together. . . members of the same body, so shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.” (p.125)
There are moments when I feel greedy, even inhumane, thieving of abundance from the common good while three million are destitute. It takes a lot of internal argument, rationalization to repress this recurring sense of excess and moral injustice. But over time my sympathy for the downtrodden and oppressed is replaced by various ideological justifications for my prosperity.
Sometimes I have to step back from my self-serving arguments and take a distant view of injustice and of my insensitivity. The book “Arguing About Slavery” (William Lee Miller, 1996) presents just such sincere and honest rationalizations among many in the American South, not only of the morality of slavery in the early 1800’s, but also of the moral superiority of slave society, reminiscent of the glorious Golden Age of classical Greece.
Beginning in 1835, ex-President John Quincy Adams (Unitarian), as a U.S. Senator engaged a nine-year battle to defeat the gag-rule whereby representatives of Southern states sought to reject petitions by abolitionists for the elimination of slavery. It wasn’t enough that abolitionist petitions be referred to state committees where they died of neglect. It was a matter of Southern honor that they be suppressed—thus the gag rule. The sincerity, indignation and moral insensitivity of Southern slave-holders is apparent in the Congressional Record in the words of South Carolina’s James Henry Hammond, February 1, 1836:
“Slavery is said to be an evil; that it impoverishes the people, and destroys their morals. If it be an evil, it is one to us alone, and we are contented with it—why should others interfere? But it is no evil. On the contrary, I believe it to be the greatest of all the great blessings which a kind Providence has bestowed upon our glorious region.
“Sir, I do firmly believe that domestic slavery, regulated as our is, produces the highest toned, the purest, best organization of society that has ever existed on the face of the earth. . . . (and) rendered our southern country proverbial for its wealth, genius, and its manners.
“Slavery does indeed create an aristocracy—an aristocracy of talents, of virtues, of generosity and courage. In a slave country every freeman is an aristocrat. Be he rich or poor, if he does not possess a single slave, he has been born to all the natural advantages of the society in which he is placed, and all its honors lie open before him, inviting his genius and industry.” (“Arguing About Slavery”)
Southern nostalgia for the Golden Age of classical Greece can be seen in the architecture of plantation mansions with their distinctive Greek columns. But to gaze with wonder at the glorious accomplishments of Southern and Northern aristocracies has in recent years been balanced with truth-telling of the sufferings of slaves, of poor whites and of women. We have uncovered the corruption of those who made individual wealth and social status of primary value over the common good as members in community.
Poor people who internalized greed also suffered wealth’s corruption as well as the rich. Unitarian Universalist theologian Thandeka notes that “White working-class and middle-class Americans vote as if their economic interests are identical to the rich” only a tiny elite actually enjoy wealth’s privilege and power. Whether rich or poor, the daily hard-scrabble to the top of the heap creates a moral insensitivity to those one climbs over—even in those wannabes who are at the bottom of the heap.
In our dog-eat-dog struggle, rich and poor alike numb our sensitivities to the suffering of those left behind with arguments of entitlement. As John D. Rockefeller said: “The good Lord gave me my money.” (Gilbert, p.132) We numb ourselves to the destitute by rhetoric: “I worked hard and deserve every penny I make.” Arrogantly we judge the poor as deserving every unhappiness that comes their way. It’s part of our Puritan Calvinist heritage that “character is all and circumstances nothing, . . . (seeing) in the poverty of those who fall by the way, not a misfortune to be pitied and relieved, but a moral failure to be condemned, . . . (seeing) in riches. . . the blessing which rewards the triumph of energy and will.” (p.15)
Our self-righteousness is hubris. Robert Kuttner writes in “The Economic Illusion”: “An investor happens to hold the right stock at the right time; an autoworker finds himself in the wrong trade in the wrong decade. The unexpected passing of a rich aunt produces a windfall for one family, while the untimely death of a husband produces hardship for another. Prudent citizens who save and invest sometimes lose their shirts; diligent and loyal workers often lose their jobs. People reap fortuitous windfalls or suffer devastating reverses that have nothing to do with their social contribution or their personal effort.” Despite the evidence of inheritance, luck, blind fate and the workings of impersonal social forces, we credit our prosperity to effort, as if we deserve our success and those others, the poor who worked hard too, were less deserving.
The moral foundation of laissez-faire economics found in the thought of Adam Smith further justifies seeking personal self-interest. His ideology theorized an “invisible hand”—a divine hand that guides the market transforming individual selfishness into the common good. (p.18) In his day, Adam Smith was confident in advising people to pursue their self-interest, that the excesses would be countered by law, morality, religion, custom and education. But today, the people’s sense of community no longer tempers individual excess. Greed is no longer considered one of the Seven Deadly Sins but rather, the common good. Yet even Adam Smith wrote: “By having their minds constantly employed on the arts of luxury (the people) grow effeminate and dastardly.” (p.18)
Let me give just a few examples of how the “invisible hand” of the Market is thoroughly incompetent to create the common good. The market follows the greatest profit. Subsequently, productive resources are allocated to create consumer products and services consumed by those with the most money, luxuries for the rich rather than necessities for the poor, never mind the common good. As our productive power is directed toward luxuries, the price of necessities actually goes up.
Research and development of guzzling SUV’s displace R & D on low-cost cars and alternative fuel sources; non-profitable food stores and hospitals in economically-depressed neighborhoods are closed, and exotic stores, restaurants and hospitals catering to elective and high-tech procedures are opened in wealthy communities. The common good that makes possible the productivity of the poor is not served by market forces.
This morning I can but survey and highlight the insights in the book “How Much Do We Deserve?” by UU Richard Gilbert. But let me mention one more point and close with a story of hope.
Perhaps the most destructive effect of the market ideology that greed is good, is the fragmentation of community solidarity. The self-righteous wealthy and wealthy wannabes judge others who are unfortunate as being responsible for their own poverty and deny to them the basic needs required for anyone to participate in the economy and to contribute to the common good. A widening gap between rich and poor, isolation of the wealthy from the real-life problems of the poor, and conspicuous consumption of luxuries by both rich and poor fractures the sense of community solidarity, reducing the capacity of society’s members to work together for any good, public or private. In fact, public goods are abandoned, and that communal context for individual productivity disintegrates into class war, the wealthy and wannabe wealthy each against all.
I think Plato was right when he advised: ”The . . . possession of goods and chattels, . . . when they are in excess, they produce enmities and feuds both in States and privately, . . . while if they are deficient they produce, as a rule, serfdom. . . . And let no man love riches for the sake of his children, in order that he may leave them as wealthy as possible; for that is good neither for them nor for the State.” (p.130)
Robert Roberts tells this story: “He was visiting the fourth-grade class of his son Daniel where the teacher had organized a `balloon stomp.’ Each child had a balloon tied on his or her leg, and the object was to obliterate everyone else’s balloon without letting anything happen to yours. It was every (one) for (oneself) and each against all. As soon as somebody stomped you, you were `out,’ and the child who still had a plump, glistening balloon when everybody else’s hung limp and tattered would have the winner’s glory.
“The teacher gave the signal, and the children leapt ferociously on each other’s balloons, doing their best, meanwhile, to protect themselves against the onslaught of others. All, that is, except one or two who lacked the spirit of competition. These were just dismayed by all the hullabaloo, and their balloons were predictably laid waste. In a few seconds all balloons were burst but one.
“Then a disturbing thing happened. Another class, this time a class of mentally handicapped children, was brought in and prepared to play the same game. Balloons were tied to their legs and they were briefed on the rules of play. Said Roberts, `I got a sinking feeling in my midsection. I wanted to spare these kids the pressure of a competitive brawl.’
“They had only the foggiest notion of what this was all about. After a few moments of confusion, the idea got across to one or two of them that the balloons were supposed to be stomped, and gradually it caught on. But as the game got under way, it was clear these kids had missed the spirit of it. They went about methodically getting their balloons stomped. One girl carefully held her own in place so that a boy could pop it, and then he did the same for her. When all the balloons were gone, the entire class cheered in unison.” (quoted by Richard Gilbert from “Taking the World to Heart,” p.123)
Richard Gilbert reflected on the story: “These children had mistaken the competitive game for a cooperative one, but their error has some advantages. In the original game only one child could win, but they discovered how to make everybody a winner. . . . As the children played it, the game was for camaraderie. . . . The others are there to help you along. The play of these children fosters generosity, trust, cooperation, gentleness, and concern for one another. . . . the sense of community and cooperation. . . .” (p.124)
As John Winthrop wrote in 1630, may we, both in this fellowship and in the greater community, “be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities, (may we) delight in each other, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together. . . . members of the same body, so shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.” (p.125)
Closing Words: “There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blasts on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.” (Walt Kelly in “Pogo”)
“Riches that leave another poor I do not want.” (Andre Gide)