Progress?

In "Where I Lived and What I Lived For," Henry David Thoreau wrote:

The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.

Lately, the economy here in the good ol' US of A has been in less than stellar shape, and economists have hinted at (but tried to avoid) the nastiest word known in economics (and perhaps in politics, too): recession.

I always wonder how it is that economists talk about growing the economy every year, every quarter, every month. The metaphorical pie must be bigger at each measuring point so that each of us gets a bigger piece. Of course, the bigger piece doesn't really mean anything because the pie's bigger, after all, so everybody got a bigger piece. This, we call inflation.

But still economists and politicians and CEOs worry about progress, and the only way to define this progress is to make the economy larger. Ironically, increasing the size of the economy actually means getting people to be less economical: everyone must buy more, so everyone must work more, so everyone must make more, so everyone must buy more. And so it continues, until any step in this cycle falters--then, we start to worry about recession.

But really, is this progress? Don't get me wrong: I'm certainly a person who enjoys the conveniences of modern living. I do enjoy air conditioning, the internet, having light in the evenings, digital music, the convenience of electric appliances. But I do wonder why we must always spend more, and why it is that we're encouraged to think of this spending as making progress.

We know nothing these days of what Thoreau would call a "rigid economy." We know, instead, that the way to stimulate the economy is to get people to spend more--and if this means encouraging them to spend more than they make via credit cards, second mortgages, and the like, or if it means sending them a "bonus" check for $600 (which the government doesn't really have, either), then so be it, since this spending will provide jobs for other people who will then spend their wages (plus whatever they can borrow), too. And so we busy ourselves in making and advertising and transporting and selling and buying and using and discarding a bunch of shit that absolutely nobody needs.

We live too fast. We are infatuated with the newest, the fastest, the best--we are always out with the old and in with the new, when we should be asking what was wrong with the old. Or, what's more, we should be asking if we really even needed the old.

Thoreau's question is a good one: "But if we stay home and mind our business, who will want railroads?" A simple and a contemplative life--one in which we spend time "tinkering upon our lives to improve them"--does not grow the economy.

In times of national crisis, even, times when we should be considering and debating the course of action our country should take, our leaders (such as they are) encourage us not to think or discuss, but to spend: to travel, to buy, to borrow, to work, to spend, to consume. It is not important to our leaders that we determine what is right; it is instead important that we do what is profitable--profitable not to our characters, but in dollars and cents only.

And in the process, our lives are consumed by soon-to-be-discarded gadgets and by the work we must do to earn wages to pay for them.

We should ask: can we really afford it?