For most of human history, there has not been enough. Not enough food, not enough clothing. not enough shelter, not enough knowledge. Romanticists like to wax wistful about some time in eden and look to primitive tribes living primitive lives that europeans only choose for short periods as observers for PhD's in anthropology. (Perhaps the reason there are so many hallucinogenic drugs known to primitive folks is that noble savages were anxious to escape reality.) More often than not life was short, nasty, and brutish. Children often died soon after they were born, and in many instances they were killed because there was not enough food for them or because they were females. Popular values of today's middle class, such as sexual equality or access to health care or choice of how one lives one's life were not even thought of. There was no middle class. No one wanted real change, because there was no change. Well, I suppose there was the possibility that one's tribe might be conquered and one would become a slave, but for the most part the first 1,998 or so centuries of human existence, things were much the same.
Our political and philosophical and religious systems developed in a time of want. Jesus said, 'the poor you will always have with you', and we have literally accepted that as gospel. But we humans made something that changed the last two centuries into a time very different from the first 1,998. We made the industrial revolution.
It's very popular and easy for folks born these days to look back at the folks of the 19th century and shame them for their sins such as 'sexual inequality' (by which of course one can only meaningfully mean traditional sexual roles, because if you really think the sexes are equal, you haven't had sex) or slavery, as if they were somehow malicious choices of the framers of the Constitution rather than the way things had been forever. Indeed what was unique in the formation of the American republic was the idea that things were could to be different. The ideas that slavery was not ordained by nature and that women were human beings were part of the founding ideology, in the aspirations of the Declaration of Independence, even if such a utopia were not quite ready for the legalities of the Constitution.
Then came the industrial revolution. The steam engine would free the slaves, and electricity would bring women the vote. And, as the productive abilities of industrial capitalism grew, for the first time it has become possible for everyone to have a piece of the pie. A smaller percentage of the world's population will go to sleep hungry tonight than ever before. Birth rates are declining, fewer women and children are dying in childbirth, and children are living to become old adults. 'Be fruitful and multiply' no longer means 'have twelve children so maybe two or three will grow big enough to help out in the fields'.
Our political and philosophical and religious systems, however, have not caught up. We still think and act as if because you have enough to eat, and more, it must mean that I don't have enough. And far too often we still act as if wealth were a sin rather than an advantage. (Although of course when we go to buy a new Prius to hold the Bernie 2020 bumper sticker--where do Toyota build those things?--we ask the bank for a loan rather than going to the buy flying a sign at the exit of the Co-op.) We rail against the 1% for being greedy while we daily post the things of which we demand more.
But we mostly don't notice that there is now a very big pie. (One might even say a REALLY HUUGE pie.) My proportionally small piece of that pie is enough. And, if I want more, there are plenty of ways to earn it. Those ways might mean I would have to think hard to understand the changing economy, but that is something we all need to do.
We also need to overcome our fears and defensiveness. McLuhan said something to the effect that since Sputnik we have all be actors in the same play. I would suggest that we have all been actors in the same play since World War I. We act as if there were winners and losers. Tell me, who 'won' World War I? (I'm tempted to cue the Bhagavad Gita, because it was kinda ahead of its time.) We act as if our little scene is the most important in the play, and we are very jealous when the kabuki folk in another scene get more applause. Will claimed that 'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their entrances and exits, and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.' (You see why Shakespeare chose the name Globe for his theater.) That understanding of our roles still demands flexibility, something which many of us seem to lack. What has changed dramatically since Shakespeare' time is the size of the drama. We are now players in a global drama, and for the first time it need not be a tragedy.
Unfortunately, it is often the very ones of us who have benefited most from industrial capitalism and globalization who are least willing to let them continue to bring more pie to the rest of us. We live in a world where change is possible, but we think it comes from flying signs and being angry. We never recognize, for instance, that the food we have abundantly is the result of blind genetic modification, and that now we can see what we are doing. We don't recognize that the primary force to end poverty is electricity
This essay is getting longer than post-literate folks will read. I dread just proof reading it. So, on this Pi day, a day that might lead us to ponder the advances we have made in clothing and feeding and housing the world, to celebrate our advances in knowledge, and to honor those who are making more advances, let me make a political and philosophical and religious statement of belief:
We do not need to use less of the things we have made. We need to make more of the things we use.
Let a thousand pies be baked.
Happy Pi Day.
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