This Is Our City

More from Schoeck: "Anyone who harbours, or propagates, such guilty feelings must be suffering from a false perspective, explicable less in terms of ethics and theology than in terms of social psychology…It is possible to understand…people who…feel impelled to undergo some exceptional form of penance or expiation, go into voluntary exile in a place far removed from what we call civilization, where they devote their services to the people of the country. But it is not at all the same thing if, instead of undertaking such an ‘Albert Schweitzer mission’ oneself, one preaches it from one’s desk in London, Paris, Washington or Zurich as a duty universally incumbent on all other Westerners, so that anybody who cannot himself be an Albert Schweitzer or Peace Corps worker is ridden with guilt, and depreciates existentially whatever he is able to achieve within his life and his own field of activity." P. 322

Following up on the comment quoting Schoeck, I think many in evangelicalism want to place a burden of guilt on Christians that we don't deserve. We are neither responsible for the poverty and oppression of the poor world nor can we do much about it. Could we do more? Obviously! How much more? That is between each Christian and God. Schoeck thinks that people who feel guilty about the poor outside of their sphere of influence and responsibility fear the envy of others. Also, they have an unrealistic view of the world that believes all wealth should be evenly distributed and can be evenly distributed. The first is not true and the second is impossible. However, even if it were possible, it would increase, not decrease envy.

From “Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior” by Helmut Schoeck: “The duty to do a good deed, or to avoid a harmful action, exists in fact only if I can be causally responsible for something. Neither could there be guilt nor could I have a true sense of guilt that it would be wrong to exclude from my conscience unless I withdrew from that responsibility. Sometimes I can extend my responsibility to forebears and successors…Yet the guilt, conscience, responsibility, so much discussed today…have little in common with actual concepts of this kind.”

Rick, thanks for the link to the book review. McCarraher gets some things right and others wrong. He is right that most politics is controlled by corporations. In economics it’s called “regulatory capture”. He is wrong that the US has anything close to a capitalist system. FDR and Johnson destroyed the last vestiges of capitalism. Carter/Reagan made only slight changes. Today the US has what is called “market socialism” that leaves a small space for markets but is mostly controlled by the corporations through the state. Another name for our system might be fascism, but without the racial implications. He is wrong about the US melding Christianity and capitalism. Capitalism is Christian economics. It developed from Church scholars searching for the just price and finding it only in free markets. The combining of the Christian elements of respect for property, free markets and the rule of law in the Dutch Republic created the system we call capitalism.

Paul, you do not have to remember the review of Graeber' book. It is right here in all its glory in Books and Culture, May June. Click on the book review at the site here. Or go to http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/2013/mayjune/love-stronger-than-deb t.html?paging=off