charles hugh smith-Where There Is Ruin IV: Spiritual Renewal

	weblog/wEssays archives	home
	Where There Is Ruin IV: Spiritual Renewal (July 28, 2006) And... Friday Quiz: Where Is This? *I introduce today's Friday Quiz: Where Is This? with a disquisition on the theme of the week, Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasures,* a line from the Sufi poet Rumi.** Correspondent Mark D. was kind enough to send this photograph and permission to use it as I saw fit. Here is his description of the modest structure: Attached is a picture of a covered covered wagon with a functioning cistern. It should be on the national registry in my opinion. 10 kids were raised in it according to my aunt, and a bachelor lived in it till the 50's. Thank you, Mark, for this wonderful photo of a bygone America. Readers, guess the state where this handbuilt home--a covered "covered wagon," we are told--is located, and I'll send you a collector's copy of my little road/American identity novel I-State Lines. (Guessing is not only allowed, but encouraged.) Note: The following commentary is mine alone, and is not related to either the history of this strikingly humble abode or the views of Mark D. Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasures. The ruin is just ahead, and the treasure is spiritual renewal, not financial wealth. It is precisely the false prosperity of the last six years which will vanish in a great conflagration of debt renounced and wealth destroyed, followed by a new-found appreciation for the values implicit in this small hand-made house on the open prairie. You may detect some righteous anger in these lines; I confess I am the offspring of missionaries. My father's parents were lay missionaries in El Salvador in the years 1919-1925. My aunts and uncle were born there, and my aunts spoke fluent Spanish. Only my father was born in the States. The missionary zeal found expression elsewhere in the clan as well; an uncle of my father served on a mission in Africa, and died there of a tropical disease. The religious tradition of the Scots/English I was raised in valued thrift and modesty, and scorned ostentation in either religious piety or material wealth. Are these values unique to any one faith or creed? Of course not; the Japanese have a word, motainai, which expresses the value of thrift; it's wrong to waste. Japan, too, was once a very poor country where waste was frowned upon. There is a biblical story which seems appropriate to the coming ruin and the destruction of false wealth built on easy credit: Joseph's forecast of seven fat years and seven lean years to the Pharaoh of Egypt. The fat years were those of true productivity (the construction of the Internet, faster cheaper computers, etc.), 1993-1999. By all rights, the speculative excesses of those heady times should have resulted in a downturn of the business cycle and a return to savings for the next seven years, 2000-2006. As we know, The Powers That Be quailed at the prospect of thrift, as it required a recession/downturn in spending. By raising liquidity and lowering lending standards and interest rates, they created another seven fat years--but at a cost. the cost, of course, is a series of imbalances which will topple under their own weight, imbalances which are fundamentally those of excess borrowing and mis-allocation of capital: enormous deficits, real estate speculation run amok (what else can we call a time when 40% of home sales are speculative second or third or fourth properties?) and a negative savings rate. This forced fatness engendered not just financial ruin but a deep, pervasive spiritual rot at the very core of American life. The spiritual hollowness is visible everywhere, and it is not the phony rot hyped by religious zealots of every stripe, but a rot without such easy measure. It is the rot of thrift mocked and borrowing glorified, of real work mocked and speculation glorified, of honesty mocked and business legerdemain glorified, of surplus wasted in an orgy of "entitlements" giveaways, of the following generations heaped with debt while this greedy spendthrift generation piles on benefits and tax cuts for itself. It is the spiritual rot of The Powers That Be mocking those warning of global warming, even as CO-2 levels have risen from 200 to 380 and super-storms displace millions; of corporate "leaders" raking off millions, marrying their young secretary and then lecturing the avaricious hordes beneath them on how "to make it" in a global economy; of Yahoo Finance glorifying "the most expensive houses" and "private islands" weekend after sickening weekend, the analog of the glorification of talentless "celebrity" and crass gangster "bling" as the height of American culture. The default setting of American poltical culture is similarly rotten to the core, of sleazy fat politicos riding around in a hybrid car for a block to reveal their support of "green technology" and then slipping into their oversized SUV once safely out of camera range. If money has long been the other's milk of politics, it is now the coffee, chips, steak and dessert as well. The default setting of American "middle class" life is a family-destroying commute to a cul-de-sac McMansion in which the kids are upstairs in an air-conditioned "paradise" with the door locked, communing with the outside world via IM and earphones, their rooms cluttered with the cheap outpouring of Chinese manufacture, their friends bought off with money supplied by parents who are too busy to be involved and too self-absorbed with their own status and wealth to care. That symbol of excess, the SUV or big pick-up never sullied by actual work, sits in the driveway, boasting that the owners care about safety above gas mileage, and as long as they can make the monthly nut on all that mountain of debt they took on to buy the McMansion, the big vehicles and the rest of the half-broken junk filling their garage, then the American Dream is alive and well. Never a borrower or a lender be--get real! Lowest rates in a generation! What can one say about a society which spends more on medical care than any other, and yet 45 million citizens have no medical insurance and 40% are overweight to point that their health--their greatest wealth--is compromised? That this "free enterprise system of consumer choice provides the best care in the world"? Is that what you call shamefully high infant mortality rates, and a population which is measurably less healthy than our developed-world brethren? Is a system which enables doctors and lawyers to make millions and pharmaceutical companies to reap billions really set up to "provide the best care in the world" or simply the most profitable care in the world? We're told that the two are in fact one: profit drives the best care. Really? Then why as a society are we so sick, and why do we pay so much to be so unhealthy? Yes, I admit it. I look forward to the collapse of this false prosperity, the ruination of all speculation, of government deficits, of ostentation without meaning or limit; for only in this complete ruin is spiritual renewal possible. If you would like to see a parable of just this, please rent Spirited Away: Decay and Renewal. For more on this subject and a wide array of other topics, please visit my weblog. copyright © 2006 Charles Hugh Smith. All rights reserved in all media. I would be honored if you linked this wEssay to your site, or printed a copy for your own use.
	weblog/wEssays	home