B: To Vincent

In light of your recent post "Thanks for the World", I have been doing some thinking about our adversarial tendencies, and I've come to conclusion that the problem may be that I don't have a clear idea of exactly what you're trying to accomplish here.  I have a certain vague idea; I have a sense of it, but not a clear grasp.  If I had to put it into exact words I would say that you are trying to validate spirituality, not religion in general, and certainly not any religion in particular, but merely...spirituality.  However, I suspect that you may not be entirely clear on what you mean by that (neither am I), so you're also trying to explore the concept itself, the deepest yearnings of mankind, the things which give our lives substance and fulfillment.  I could be totally wrong about this, but that's just the thing; I don't know.

You see, I myself have no real agenda here, and if I did have some idea of something I'd like to accomplish, I don't want to work on something that's completely as cross purposes to what you're working on.  If this is to be a book, I feel like there should be some unity of purpose behind it.  So this leaves me hesitant to venture off into the dark and to pursue what might otherwise be tantalizing threads.  I'm swinging in the dark in all directions.  I feel like I've been brought in as a consultant that doesn't know what I'm consulting on.  I feel like a fellow traveler that doesn't know our destination, so I'm left to comment on your method of walking and left to making critical posts about the paths you're taking to get there.  In other words, being in the dark about our goal, there's not much that I can do but criticize.  I feel like I'm attacking your ideas with out understanding the ends you're trying to achieve with them.  If you ARE trying to validate spirituality, then I feel like, "Well, why didn't you say so.  I'm all for it.  How can I help?"

Let me offer something by way of analogy, or perhaps something more, depending on where the ensuing conversation takes us.  The other day on your Wayfaring blog, a woman named "Susan" responded to your Fisherman story with some snide remarks about the "Industrial West" (Don't get me started on that.)  Anyway, you replied to her about a follow-up to the story where the fisherman's philosophy catches on, and the world's economy collapses as a result.  I admit, I got a kick out of that...as a response, and in that context.  However, in all seriousness, I have strong misgivings about the doctrine of consumerism, and I suspect that you do as well.  In the short term, I can see how it has a certain logic too it.  People have to keep buying things, so that the companies producing and selling these things stay in business and people have jobs and yada yada yada.  I don't know how they look at in England, but here in American it has been fed to us as unquestionable dogma for at least 30 years or more.  Yet, when you really stand back and look at it, it doesn't really make any sense.  It seems to be that an economy should be there to provide a stable framework so that our products and resources should be available when we want them and need them.  Consumerism, on the other hand, suggests that we need to keep consuming our products and resources simply to keep the money circulating like blood in the veins of the economy.  It makes consumption a means to a stable economy, rather than protecting the economy a means to stable consumption.  The idea seems to me to be backwards, fundamentally flawed, and potentially dangerous.  It seems like waste in the service of prosperity.  I don't think it's good for us, good for the planet, or even necessarily good for the economy.  I think that if we don't radically re-think the doctrine of consumerism, then eventually (perhaps very soon) the whole mess is going to blow up in all our faces.  But yet, I don't have a practical solution.  I don't have an alternative at this point, and it does seem like if we were to follow the fisherman, or embrace Thoreau's simple life, the world's economy would collapse.  There desperately needs to be a solution, though.  There has to be a way of saving the economy other than consumerism, which I don't think is saving the economy anyway, but rather leading it to an inevitable doom (if something isn't done.)

So anyway, let's assume hypothetically that you felt the same way.  You decide to write a book, looking for an alternative philosophy to consumerism.  You bring me in as your partner, but you don't make your plan explicit, so I don't really understand what we're doing.  And let's say that you decide to take the "Eight Fold Path" of denouncing industry, denouncing science, denouncing technology, denouncing western civilization as shallow because we don't carry pots of water five miles from a dirty creek on our heads....you know, the usual highlights.  Now me, not understanding what's driving all this, would stand back at this point and go, "What the fuck are you talking about?", and I would go on to defend the things you're denouncing.  I would do this, not because I support consumerism, but because I don't think these things are necessarily the root of the problem.  However, the misunderstanding would ensue.  You would take me as an agent of the problem, and I would take you as kook.  On the other hand, if I knew that we were working for a common cause, then I could put a reassuring arm on your shoulder and say, "I'm on your side.  I absolutely agree.  I just have some other ideas how we might go about this that you might want to consider."

So, I guess I'm saying we should have some transparency and disclosure here.  We should have a meeting of the minds, establishing our goals (sorry if that sounds kind of corporate, but it's necessary for a joint project.)  It's possible that you have been clearer than I thought, but that I haven't been listening.  But that's just because we've launched straight into hashing over the details before we even began.  So, differences aside, I think we need to discuss a goal.  If we're going to work on the same book, it needs to be towards a common end.  If it isn't the above goal (which perhaps we could narrow down to something a bit more solid that I can sink my teeth into), it has be something we can agree on, or else I don't see the point of a joint project.  We might lay out alternative approaches to the problem, whatever it is, but we need to agree that it is a problem, and the nature of the problem, and that it needs to be addressed.

Agreed?

[By the way, after you read this, you can move this to the December section with the rest of the administrative notes.  I'm just leaving it at the top to catch your attention.]