AY: Materialist Human Collective?
A few weeks ago a friend and I walked into a closing Circuit City. It was a strange and surreal moment. At one point I felt as though I was at a funeral which I didn’t really care to mourn for. And the next moment, it was as though I was in the midst of some sort of cultic practice, worshipping a god that seemed strangely familiar (or maybe too familiar). There were over 100 people crammed into this little store flocking under sales signs and hoarding the useless items marked 90% off. I am not much for large crowds, especially when some sort of religion is involved, so I made my escape to the parking lot. I sat upon a island curb in the middle of a desert made of tar and surrounded by commerce to contemplate what I had just experienced.
The funeral was for big business and the worship was that of materialism, obviously. Why had I experienced it in such a visceral way? I realized it was that I was watching two things that I have battled with for a long time duke it out. Both were living strong yet dying at the same time. What a paradox that was. Even the death of big business couldn’t kill consumerism and materialism. After much thought, I came to the conclusion that the sadness in me was not that big business had died or that there is no longer a place to buy overpriced technology, but that these beasts of culture were more powerful than I thought.
I had been hoping in this economic mess that perhaps big business would continue to dwindle and more of a focus would be put on small, local business. Perhaps this is happening on a small scale, or large. I don’t know as I am not a professional marketplace analyst. But the bottom line is that I fear the beasts that reared their ugly heads and got us all into this mess will rise again and quench the thirst of the greedy. I hope that small business will grow, but fear that if it can’t satiate the needs of the materialist human collective, big business will rise again to “save the day”. Then we’ll be in same big mess, or at least our progeny will be.
The other thing that I am hoping for in this downturn is that we begin to look at the trades as viable and important jobs. For too long we have attached a stigma to the trades that they are only for people who weren’t good enough for college. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The training process is rigorous and not for someone who just wants to slide through. This stigma is the reason that the trades are struggling to find workers. Tacoma Public utilities says that over 25% of their line workers are going to retire in the next 5 years and they have no one on the radar who seems to be ready to step up. We have created a culture for far too long that says you need to go pursue a “white” collar job in order to live the ideal life — in order to live the American Dream. We have always needed a strong blue collar work force. And now, more than ever, will we need an even stronger one.
I believe that community is defined by the people who are in it. Who do we have in Tacoma, and who do we want in Tacoma? I believe that true community is made up of different generations, different classes, and races. I don’t believe in a homogenous community, but a diverse community. Perhaps this is what we should be looking to as a religion — community. Ultimately small businesses care about their community because their community is what in turn cares for them. A community cares for the workers and the people who live in it because they are what make up the systems in a city. I think I could handle a large group of people if that were their religion. To care for each other and regard each other as though their future is inextricably bound up with one another rather than treating each other as mere commodities in the worship of all things material.
22 comments
I I'm for Change (for tacoma) March 27, 2009
My initial gut-feelings/thoughts after 1 read thru your blog Adam.
1) Nicely written. As always.
2) You complain about big business, but then state you want the small local businesses to grow. Grow to what? Your dictated size? Not too small, but not too big? Side rant: Too often I hear people in Tacoma complain about the local boy done good. The company is big biz now, doesn’t care about me anymore. Too many non-caring yuppies are moving to town. It all sounds like teenage angst when the local band makes good. Everyone starts calling them sell-outs; their out of touch now; yadda yadda yadda. No, they did what successful bands and businesses do – they grow and expand. It is the complainers that have been left stuck in their non-evolving lives that are feeling left behind and it shows in their whining about the success of others.
3) I think the perception of blue collar jobs vs white collar is old thinking. I know few people that think that way. Maybe this is due to my age group or being a transplant to Tacoma? I also don’t, and have never, bought into the American Dream. Which would be what exactly? The house, wife, 2.5 kids, dog, and the picket fence? Boring!
I think a problem with “blue”collar jobs is most are perceived as being union jobs. Gen X & Y don’t want a union boss telling us when to take a break, pay dues, don’t work, etc. We don’t want that inherent wedge placed between a “worker” and “manager”. We want a team working toward the betterment of the company and our selves. We want to be promoted on our hard work and contributions, instead of waiting our turn.
4) I agree with you about community. I sometimes fear though that the Tacoma community doesn’t want new and different people and classes. It wants to stay as it is; whining how success passed it by…
M Mofo from the Hood March 27, 2009
“I believe that community is defined by the people who are in it…I believe that true community is made up of different generations, different classes, and races. I don’t believe in a homogenous community, but a diverse community. Perhaps this is what we should be looking to as a religion — community.“–AY
That’s what a lot of people think and are led to think in contemporary Western society. The umbrella term is Secular Humanism. You’ve also mentioned Pluralism and Materialism and Relativism. That’s exactly where we are today–a Secular Humanist society. A society that says that God is not necessary. Man is the authority by which all values are measured.
“Man the Measure” is the pinnacle of materialism. If man is just a material accident of the Universe (since God did not create him) and therefore always changing, then how could a religion of community (man) ever provide a stable, coherent, unified society?
A Adam Ydstie March 27, 2009
@ I’m for Change (for Tacoma)
Thank you for the comments, I do appreciate reading them.
You say,
“We want a team working toward the betterment of the company and our selves. We want to be promoted on our hard work and contributions, instead of waiting our turn.”
I think this is truly what a well functioning union should be… a “community” that works for the betterment of their trade, and helps promote the hard work that people put in. Granted, I fear sometimes those unions are few and far between.
@Mofo
“If man is just a material accident of the Universe (since God did not create him) and therefore always changing, then how could a religion of community (man) ever provide a stable, coherent, unified society?”
This is why I do no like materialism. I believe that we are created and that we are created to be in community. That doesn’t necessarily mean harmonious though… as well all know community is hardly stable, or coherent. What does real unity look like? I don’t really know, that is why I ask. Maybe there is still discord in harmony. Maybe a true community sings a dissonant melody.
J justin camarata March 27, 2009
adam-
the idea that the small business should be the major catalyst of tacoma’s economic movement is discussed a lot around here, but i really don’t think it’s realistic or practical if we’re serious about our city’s growth.
if you want a healthy and diverse populace, you need places for them to work. blackwater cafe and satellite coffee are great for your morning fix, but do they provide the long-term economic stability and jobs and tax revenue a city needs to thrive? like it or not, that sort of stability comes from places like circuit city or russell or the marriott on pacific. i like the local micro-businesses as much as everyone else here, but to suggest the bigger ones are problematic and to dream about them failing is ultimately to wish ill upon tacoma and the country at large. without jobs from bigger companies like that, the city won’t be able to collect the revenue it needs for basic services unless it implements regressive property or sales taxes on the citizens who can afford it least. that will only further depress our already kicked-to-the-curb economy. likewise, without those companies providing the employment, no one could go to satellite or the like except for the select few who work there. under this economy, eventually tacoma would be a ghost town.
look, i’m not at all suggesting that we should let tacoma become a bland corporate-owned american city, indistinguishable from any other. i don’t want that for us. but the bottom line is that a failure of a business of any kind, be it big or small, is a serious matter, and typically the bigger the company, the more its impact will be felt. jobs are lost, tax revenue is lost, economic stability is lost. and if we really want people here, people who will patronize places like blackwater or satellite, we need the bigger companies to stick around. globalization is here to stay, and any region that doesn’t embrace it won’t stay afloat.
M Mofo from the Hood March 27, 2009
AY @3 “What does real unity look like?”
The short answer to your question, and the answer to what opposes Materialism is this: Christian spirituality. The Doctrine of The Trinity was worked out by Christian theologians centuries ago. Although the word Trinity is not used in the Bible, the Bible does mention three distinct but unified essences of God: God the Father, His Son Jesus, and The Holy Spirit. This Trinity represents Community, Diversity, and Unity.
The interplay of the Trinity and man is central to Christian redemptive or salvation history. First, if you read the Ten Commandments and see what man is, then you might agree that man, who has fallen from the Grace of God, needs to redeem himself or, more accurately, man needs to be saved. Man needs to be saved because he was born condemned and he doesn’t have the power within himself to help himself and live a perfect life, and thereby make himself worthy to stand before God. So, God the Father initiates his plan to help man to redeem himself. God sends His Son to Earth on a mission to save man from an eternal destiny separated from the presence of God.
Jesus is the definitive revelation of God’s Grace. Jesus, the definitive obedient son, is the Redeemer of man, and as told in the Gospel’s, takes the full punishment for man’s sinful nature on a Roman cross. Man deserves Justice. But God, through Jesus, gives man Grace.
Now, because man has the Bible, the Word of God, man should read it and strive to understand that he owes a major debt of Gratitude to God for all He has done. Man should, without excuse, understand where he is to direct his worship and gratitude. In fact, it is God’s commandment. Everything was created for the honor and glory of God. All praise goes to God.
It is a fact that man has a rebellious nature. Man doesn’t want to praise God. Man says that God isn’t necessary. And that delusion, that arrogance, that irrational placement of man at the pinnacle of the universe explains the rise and fall of civilizations throughout history.
If you want to know what unity looks like, if you want to find God, then you have to start by looking at Jesus.
In today’s secular humanistic world I could talk about Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam or even Materialistic Atheism, and few people would be offended. But mention the name Jesus and every hostile militant anti-Christian gets in line to pass another law, if not worse, to put an end to the memory of God.
T Thorax "Bom Tek" O'Tool March 27, 2009
Yet some of our local home-grown bigger-than-small companies don’t see the love. How many of these Tacoma Native mid-sized (between 100 and 500 employees) businesses do you patronize or even know exist? How many do you patronize and don’t even know it?
Brown and Haley
US Oil and Refining
Service Steel Aerospace Corp
North Star Glove Company
Parker Paint
Tacoma Screw
Codel Entry Systems
Auto Warehousing Co
Puget Sound International
Puglia Engineering
Standard Parts Corporation
Harris Rebar
G R Kirk Company
…and that’s just scratching the surface.
My point is, we have a large amount of mid-sized companies, and a few bigger ones like Russell, Labor Ready and Columbia Bank… why do We (collectively) not give more love to these backbones of our local economy?
A Adam Ydstie March 28, 2009
TO’T @7
Thank you for always augmenting what I am trying to communicate. I should not have used the term “big business” but rather “local business”. Thank you for helping me realize that.
M Mofo from the Hood March 28, 2009
Speaking as someone with years of experience as both a union member and a small business owner, I can testify that neither system is a satisfactory platform for social change.
Each basic system serves to guide, govern, and guard the acquistion of man’s basic needs: food, shelter, and clothing.
What good is a union or a small business if the people that operate each are corrupt?
S Squid March 28, 2009
Nice one Adam. You put into words why I always feel so creeped out going into Target or Circuit City or Best Buy. But where else to buy a laptop or flat panel tv or cheap sweater?
Mofo, love the posts above. Reminds me that people with whom you agree on so many things can hold such radically different viewpoints on fundamental things. Preach on brother.
T Thorax March 28, 2009
Thanks, Adam… great minds think alike.
And speak of, I’m with ya on thinking that the trades should be looked at more favorably. In my own case, I’m a proud member of the USW. I’ve always wondered why the prejudice is that as a blue collar man, I’m somehow inferior to an office jockey at Microsoft who makes less than I do and has $40K in student loans to go.
Unlike 95% of office jobs (99.8% of mid-to-upper management), the trades actually provide something useful to society and the local economy. I’d rather live in a city full of useful tradespeople and craftsmen than an sea of useless bankers.
Not that us working stiffs don’t have the potential to get corrupt (ahem, Mofo), but most of us are too busy doing something useful to have enough time to scheme.
I’d rather live in a strong, productive economy than one full of flashy BMWs, paper pushers and fancy titles.
T Thorax March 28, 2009
After reading my previous post, I noticed something was wrong: my words didn’t come out right. I want to clear up that I was referencing Mofo and the corruption issue, not implying that Mofo was corrupt.
M Mofo from the Hood March 29, 2009
Thorax @11 “Not that us working stiffs don’t have the potential to get corrupt (ahem, Mofo), but most of us are too busy doing something useful to have enough time to scheme.”
Right. Every one of us has the potential to do awful things. Life is hard. Some people respond to life’s hardships in a manner that is just plain wild.
One remarkable thing about our culture is the number of people who can’t get no satisfaction. They try and they try. All I’ve been saying above is that you’ll never find the infinite in the finite.
Tacoma can never become an ideal place to live, but it can make use of the Bible’s eternal wisdom as an authority on how to respond to life’s perennial hardships–it is a very reliable guidebook by which one can measure values, discern the good from the bad, the true from the false. It does answer the question, “What does real unity look like?”
The foundation of necessity for a unified community? A coherent mind.
T Thorax O'Tool March 29, 2009
Coherent Mind.
Ability to be reasonable.
The desire for a unified community.
And the unquestioning loyalty to My up-and-coming regime.
…wait. Did I say that last part out loud?
C c.rae March 30, 2009
Hmmm. So, what did you end up buying?
M Mofo from the Hood March 30, 2009
“A community cares for the workers and the people who live in it because they are what make up the systems in a city. I think I could handle a large group of people if that were their religion.“–AY
Sounds like the current society that Secular Humanists have created and are still striving to develop.
Everybody should be giddy with content over all the personal freedoms and abundance of cheap products for our glory.
Who would dare speak against deviancy or the right to be born or the right to die and in between, all the trinkets one can gather in threescore and ten?
J Jesse April 1, 2009
As someone who worked a blue collar trade to get through college, I have to say that many blue collar people get thier due respect.
I was a project manager of a remodel company and dealt with many sub-contractors and staff. The “that looks good enough” attitude compelled our own company to do all of our own work for a while as to not have to deal with the half-ass contractors we were subbing to. I dunno, maybe I was just “lucky” to get those sub-contractors that sucked – they seemed to have no pride in what they did. But, I will never hire anyone at my home now to do anything that I think I can handle by reading about it online first.
That’s contractors. I have met many more professional blue collar workers (like elevator repairmen, HVAC pros, steel workers) who were awesome. The lower end jobs though… not so much.
Also, you CAN have a downtown filled with stores owned primarily by mom and pop. I dare you to find many restaraunts in Portland’s core that are chains (for instance).
V Vlorg, the Mighty April 1, 2009
You get what you pay for.
Cheap is sometimes cheap for a reason. Yes, there are plenty of “good enough” blue collar folks Having both worked as blue and white collar, I’d bet a side of beef that the ratio of Good Enoughers to Excellence in Their Jobbers is nearly the same across all industries and jobs.
J Jesse April 2, 2009
Vlorg@18: So you’ve met my partner from the eastside? Hot chick with a great (white collar)job but is dumb as a post.
V Vlorg, the Mighty April 2, 2009
Maybe. I spend way too much time in Bellevue. It’s a city full of rich airheads.
T Thorax O'Tool April 3, 2009
@ Vlorg… I nominate that for statement of the month.
A Aaron April 7, 2009
I woke up this morning to blood on the sidewalk.
All day it stayed with me… That image of blood on the sidewalk.
I processed it. I prayed. I reasoned.
It was still there. And it was still there when I came home. Staining the empty sidewalk.
A guy who I respect very much, who also wrote this article, used to live in this building. When he was here, there was a sense of community. There was a sense of mobilization…of believing that action could be taken, and change could be brought. He was pushed out by materialism. A new owner. A new management company. A new philosophy. “What are your qualifications” they asked? “I strive to be patient,faithful and provide a sense of growing community” he answered. That doesnt line up with our desire for profit they thought.
So in the time that that sense of community has been driven out, peoples eyes no longer meet yours in the hallways, and the community areas have been replaced with storage units. Squeezing a few extra dollars out of the property. And the people that made this a warm place to live have become tenants. A numerical commodity. And crime has returned to the streets…resulting in blood.
Capitalism is not Democracy. If capital gains result from community growth, there is sustainablity. If capitalism leads the way, community is replaced by the caste system… and disenfranchisement increases. Those who speak most loudly against this are usually those who have the most to gain monetarily from an imbalanced system.
The capitalistic caste system loves inequality. It provides an exploitable population.
For those of you that need a concrete example in terms of “social usefullness” and market relevance, look at Linux. On the one hand you have Microsoft who is a perfect example of what happens to the cathedral model. Centralized power. Increasing restrictions.
More and more unethical tactics to keep “market share”. And now we are seeing the rise of something that grew in community.
It is free, it is open, and it has crossed the tipping point into being technically superior. Ask companies like Redhat or Canonical (Ubuntu) if there is sustainable income in community.
CK Prahalad’d book “The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid” is an incredible picture of reversing the idea of “trickle down economics” and basing it in community.
All that if you need dollars to justify moving toward a community based economy.
For me… Im motivated by a desire to see less blood on the sidewalk.
V Vlorg, the Mighty April 8, 2009
Agreed, Aaron. The whole concept of “community” means radically different things to those who are in said community and to our corporate overlords. We say “community” and mean people who work together with the aim fo doing what’s good for each other. Essentially, what is good for my neighbor is ultimately good for me .
When the corporate overlords say “community” they mean a fancy marketing buzzword that can convice tree huggers, liberals and everone else who thinks they’re evil to give them our money. Essentially, We’ll find any way we can to get your money, even if it means perverting your words and concepts into marketing schemes .