Austerity?! Let's Talk about Abundance for All

By now we see that all the talk about austerity in these economic hard times does not apply to the wealthiest whose wealth has increased as their taxes remain low  It does not apply to military spending or the budgets of the intelligence community.  It does not apply to the bankers in the too-big-to-fail banks. It does apply to those with no jobs, low-paying jobs, and insecure jobs. It does apply to students in state universities, to people without health insurance, and to many who can no longer self-identify as middle class.

If truth were the reigning norm instead of ideology, the word “austerity” could come from the lips of our president, Congress, financial and corporate leaders only with embarrassment. More significantly, the word is an insult to Creation who continues to offer abundance intended for all. If the ones talking about austerity would use an economic model of sustainability instead of unlimited growth, Creation’s abundance would be finding its way to the tables of families. Energy would be low-carbon or no-carbon, decentralized in its distribution, and increasing quality of life in countless places.

Consider the following paragraphs on abundance from my upcoming book on “The Eden We Can Choose: Moving to a One-Earth Economy and the Stories That Get Us There” —at least that’s the working title.

Abundance

In a culture where more is better, where more means progress, where more grows the  economy, “Enough!” is heard by many as quitting or as agreeing to be marginalized.  The business and organization proverb, “If you aren’t growing, you’re dying,” goes even further by regarding “Enough!” as economic suicide.  But in a one-Earth economy, “Enough!” is the strong word that reveals the very order of Creation.  It defines the limits in which all of life can thrive, or, if ignored, decline and die.  Creation’s order includes limits such as gravity, distance, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, and high-velocity wind storms.  These are unforgiving and yet vitally beneficial to Earth’s gifts of rich, livable habitat.  

In a multi-Earth economy, “More!” is the goal to which imaginations and most daily efforts bend.  Limits?  Regulations?  These are to be circumvented or undone.  “Enough” cannot be defined in a model of economics that serves empires. But in an economic model that serves all Earth’s life, “Enough!” stirs our generative and creative powers in a model of abundance that has the astonishing capacity to cooperatively distribute the resources of the planet for all her life forms.

Much as we humans can rebel against imposed limits, real limits give us precisely the structures in which we can live freely, justly, and interdependently.  It is the real limits inherent in nature that give us the structures within which to work.  They are not government regulations, state control, or institutional policies.  Nor are they corporation contracts for resources and labor that give greater priority to wealth accumulation than to a better life for all.  They are the order of Creation, what makes Creation work.  They are evolutionarily exciting, and gift us with the stability that sustains life.  Creation’s order is revelatory, informing us of limits that are recognized by commonsense.

The after-Egypt manna gatherers in the wilderness learned to imitate nature’s life-giving limits.  They learned to use self-restraint by gathering only enough for each day, literally, daily bread.  Any more would rot.  And if they practiced greed instead of repeated actions of self-restraint, they would rot the entire sharing economy. That’s what the multi-Earths global economy has done.  Instead, the daily achievement of the manna-gatherers was not only sufficiency for their household, but to assure the common good—two high ideals in their post-imperial consciousness.

All of the learnings involved in the manna story, all of its power to help us go feral, nonetheless, do not, guarantee that we will not again be attracted to the civilization story requiring multi-Earths.  Our choice to live a one-Earth story is made again and again, each day.  Each choice deepens our conversion from the scarcity worldview of empire to an abundance-with-limits worldview.

Only in a one-Earth economy where abundance is real and has limits—both!—can we experience the feeling of an abundance that is sufficient, sharing, and loving.  Multi-Earths economies have created a legacy of capturing a lot of Creation’s generosity, but with limited consciousness or structures for sharing.  One-Earth economies, by learning from nature how she does it, have created a legacy of claiming as much of Creation’s generosity as is needed, and also growing the consciousness and structures for sharing.  It is the recognition by one-Earth, jubilee economies that nature is a wise teacher, a revealer of how to live, that makes one-Earth living so well-adapted for Earth’s style of abundance.