{"id":812,"date":"2009-12-18T18:03:39","date_gmt":"2009-12-18T23:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/hungerrumblings\/?p=812"},"modified":"2009-12-18T18:03:39","modified_gmt":"2009-12-18T23:03:39","slug":"this-christmas-let-the-megalogue-begin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worldhunger\/this-christmas-let-the-megalogue-begin\/","title":{"rendered":"This Christmas, let the megalogue begin!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pulling out and washing shelves and crispers, wiping sticky bottles, checking expiration dates and putting everything back neatly in the refrigerator gives a person time to think. So I pondered lots of things yesterday, as I began to make good on my Christmas promise to give my sister a day of cleaning help.<\/p>\n<p>I thought about my agenda, which is to get people to see things differently\u2014to question why they are driving to a nearby store, or turning on a faucet and turning away to do something else, or buying something they don\u2019t need\u2014so they will imagine and practice alternatives like walking or car sharing, respecting water instead of wasting it, or considering the environmental and social impact of the entire lifecycle of a product instead of just exclaiming over its low, low price.<\/p>\n<p>Those thoughts led me to remember an idea I once read about: the idea that a truly \u201cadvanced\u201d society stops being mesmerized with tangible \u201cstuff\u201d and invests its assets in intangibles like education, personal development, the arts\u2014so that instead of having homes full of extraneous gewgaws, we have fully developed and expressive people.<\/p>\n<p>Someone has articulated this concept very concisely\u2014someone whose ideas are in a folder in a banker\u2019s box on a shelf in a shed on a farm in Washington State, along with all the rest of my stuff. Alas, that someone is still a mystery\u2014but my internal musings on this subject triggered me to type \u201chierarchy of needs and consumerism\u201d into the world\u2019s favorite search engine, and lo and behold, up popped a FANTASTIC article along these lines: \u201cSpent: America after Consumerism\u201d by <a href=\"http:\/\/amitaietzioni.org\/\">Amitai Etzioni<\/a>, published in <em>The New Republic<\/em> last June. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tnr.com\/article\/spent?id=80661c9c-9c63-4c9e-a293-6888fc845351\">Click here to read the whole thing<\/a>, or consider this Anne-made summary:<\/p>\n<p>Responding to the current economic crisis, Etzioni says that reforming our economy requires us to get over consumerism (\u201cthe obsession with acquisition that has become the organizing principle of American life\u201d) and internalize and act on a new \u201csense of how one ought to behave.\u201d Etzioni\u2019s two candidates for replacing consumerism are <strong>communitarian<\/strong> pursuits and <strong>transcendental<\/strong> ones.<\/p>\n<p>To Etzioni, communitarianism means \u201cinvesting time and energy in relations with the other, including family, friends, and members of one&#8217;s community\u201d and includes community service. However, it\u2019s not centered on altruism, but mutuality, \u201cin the sense that deeper and thicker involvement with the other is rewarding to both the recipient and the giver.\u201d (The two-way street of engagement is an important part of the methodology of mission called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elca.org\/Who-We-Are\/Our-Three-Expressions\/Churchwide-Organization\/Global-Mission\/How-We-Work.aspx\">accompaniment<\/a> that the ELCA uses in global mission.)<\/p>\n<p>Transcendental pursuits are something Lutherans understand: \u201cspiritual activities broadly understood, including religious, contemplative, and artistic ones.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In order to urge people to skip the mall and go hiking or cook a meal together, we have to help people see that limiting consumption is not failure, but \u201cliberation from an obsession.\u201d And the way to do so is through &#8220;moral megalogues.&#8221; Etzioni says that societies are constantly engaged in mass dialogues over what is right and wrong that focus on one or two topics; recent topics include \u201cthe legitimacy of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and whether gay couples should be allowed to marry.\u201d \u00a0(Since June: health care.)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMegalogues involve millions of members of a society exchanging views with one another at workplaces, during family gatherings, in the media, and at public events. They are often contentious and passionate, and, while they have no clear beginning or endpoint, they tend to lead to changes in a society&#8217;s culture and its members&#8217; behavior,\u201d says Etzioni.<\/p>\n<p>What Etzioni calls \u201cthe megalogue about the relationship between consumerism and human flourishing\u201d is just beginning, but could get much bigger if \u201cpublic intellectuals, pundits, and politicians\u201d started to focus the megalogue on this subject and invite people \u00a0\u201cto reconsider what a good life entails.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Forget the wine, the gift cards, the sweaters\u2014this article is what I wanted for Christmas! Now I see how small individual steps, humble articles, blogs with small audiences, church basement discussion groups on simple living can ramp up a megalogue that can shift our society!<\/p>\n<p>I close with my new hero, Professor Etzioni: \u201cSocieties shift direction gradually. All that is needed is for more and more people to turn the current economic crisis into a liberation from the obsession with consumer goods and the uberwork it requires&#8211; and, bit by bit, begin to rethink their definition of what it means to live a good life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Go tell it on the mountain, that Jesus Christ is born, and that the good life is about to be redefined!<\/p>\n<p>Anne Basye,<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_813\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-813\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-813\" title=\"P1000560\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/52\/hungerrumblings\/2009\/12\/P1000560-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"A great communitarian activity: cooking New Year's Eve supper together\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worldhunger\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/52\/2009\/12\/P1000560-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worldhunger\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/52\/2009\/12\/P1000560-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worldhunger\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/52\/2009\/12\/P1000560-250x188.jpg 250w, https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worldhunger\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/52\/2009\/12\/P1000560-467x350.jpg 467w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-813\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A great communitarian activity: cooking New Year&#039;s Eve supper together<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&#8220;Sustaining Simplicity&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pulling out and washing shelves and crispers, wiping sticky bottles, checking expiration dates and putting everything back neatly in the refrigerator gives a person time to think. So I pondered lots of things yesterday, as I began to make good on my Christmas promise to give my sister a day of cleaning help. I thought [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>This Christmas, let the megalogue begin! - ELCA World Hunger<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worldhunger\/this-christmas-let-the-megalogue-begin\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This Christmas, let the megalogue begin! - ELCA World Hunger\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Pulling out and washing shelves and crispers, wiping sticky bottles, checking expiration dates and putting everything back neatly in the refrigerator gives a person time to think. So I pondered lots of things yesterday, as I began to make good on my Christmas promise to give my sister a day of cleaning help. 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