Towards a Society of Generosity

This is a commentary from two years ago, but it's at least as timely now as ever.

Towards a Society of Generosity

There is an epidemic of rage and suspicion abroad in our land: Mass shootings, reckless driving, people demanding the right to be armed wherever they go, the vicious rhetoric of hate and insult directed against immigrants, the poor, people of color, and women in the comment sections of every website and from the mouths of people running for President and some of their supporters.

Consciously, all this anger has various targets and excuses, from the supposedly lazy poor, immigrants who want a free ride on our system, to women and minorities who want special privileges. 

It’s true, as many on the left have pointed out, that these angry people are mostly white working class males frightened at the loss of their privileged position in society, privileges that depend on there being others who are under privileged. That is why they are angry at marginalized groups whom they see as demanding special privileges – when in fact they are only demanding equal rights. This white male rage extends then to government and the media insofar as the claims of marginalized others seem to be taken seriously.

But I wonder if there isn’t something more fundamental underlying all this, and that is that we are all caged in a society and an economy regulated by a principle of parsimony, as opposed to a principle of generosity. Consider all the hoops and hurdles you must jump through and over in order to rent or buy a place to live, apply for a job, apply for welfare benefits, the multiple ways in which this society meters its benefits to restrict what people can have, so it is dribbled out in the smallest possible quantities. The purpose of this stinginess baked into our economic order is to maximize the return on capital. Capital invests in the production of things we need and want in order to make as much money as possible, so it is crucial that no one has access to products without paying for them. The default position everyone in a capitalist society must take when it comes to meeting the needs of others is No! 

For contrast, consider a different kind of society, one organized around the principle of generosity. This is the principle that when it comes to giving people what they want, the default position should be Yes! And it would not be up to a small elite – the few who own everything -- to meet our needs; it would be up to all of us. In other words, the principle of an economy and society of generosity would be, “From each according to their ability” as well as “To each according to their need”. So this principle could only hold where the goods and services we need and want, and the means of producing them, are operated and controlled by all of us for the benefit of all.

Being confined in a society of parsimony, then, makes us unconsciously angry because we know implicitly that a society of generosity is possible. After all, our earliest experience was in such a society: the family. Families meet the needs of the neediest first, without asking for payment, and the same often holds true within close circles of friends. We are told that a society based on cooperation would be impossible because it is human nature to be greedy, and we really don’t care for others enough to put their needs on an equal footing with our own. But most of us actually have strong desires to help others in need. That desire, of course, must be squelched when it extends beyond friends and family, and that is what happens when parents have to explain to their children why they don’t stop to help every human derelict they pass sleeping in a doorway. We all become unwitting collaborators in the society of parsimony, for we are all guardians of the system as we carefully manage our own hard earned money and the money and property of our employers. We may even come to begrudge the small social benefits that are provided to the poor, as we can see when people in the grocery checkout line inspect the baskets of people paying with food stamps to judge whether they are buying items they don’t really need – i.e. deserve.

Thus the principle of parsimony sets us against each other, alienates us from each other, and forces us to deny something in us that makes life worth living – our urge to be generous, to cooperate, to be part of a common project that benefits us all. Life is fragile and can go off the rails in a million ways, as we all know from our own experience and the experiences of people we know. It is this very fragility that creates the opportunity to live a meaningful life working together to preserve and enrich each others’ lives, whether it’s by building houses, caring for the sick and elderly, or making art and music. Capitalism squelches this natural generosity and substitutes for it an attitude of suspicion about people getting away with what they do not deserve, what they have not earned by obedience to capital, that is by working.

I think we are all sick, tired, and resentful of this  society of parsimony whose default response to human desire is “No”. What will it take to build a generous world that says “Yes! Let’s work together to make it happen.” And it will take a lot of cooperative work here in this miserly world to make make that generous world possible.

I’m Clayton Morgareidge for the Old Mole Variety Hour.

December 28, 2015