One hears a lot about financial bubbles these days – the internet and housing bubbles, the GameStop and bitcoin speculation frenzies. These bubbles seem to represent impersonal forces of nature at work – a wave breaking on the shore – but also some sort of pathology, something broken wanting to be fixed. Avarice feeds on itself until it finally collapses of its own weight. I’m speaking from a religious/spiritual perspective here, because a strict materialist might see nothing broken: the strong survive; the weak perish. That’s life.
Highly leveraged markets and over-hyped investments are essentially symptoms of greed or desperation – either one a sign of dysfunction, of someone who either doesn’t know or doesn’t care what they’re doing. Again I arrive at a recurring theme – that one can be spiritually awake, with a functioning moral compass linked to an inquisitive mind, or one can be asleep, on autopilot, guided only by appetites and instincts.
Note that I didn’t say “spiritually dead”. Calling someone “dead” is simply a way to dehumanize them, turning them into a zombie that you can and should destroy. Don’t laugh, it’s happening all the time.
These bubbles may be a natural phenomena, but that doesn’t mean we’re powerless over them. Eventually the bubbles will self-destruct, but sometimes it’s best not to let these things run their course. There are medicines. As I watch our governments trying to apply medicines – and sometimes, tourniquets – to various pathological bubbles, I sometimes feel even hopeful, envisioning a world of “smart governments” not feeding or fed by various morbid bubbles of sin.
Such governments will only exist when sufficient numbers of its citizens understand and value simple decency. But now I’m using some slippery words: my concept of decency or civility or sin may be quite different from yours. But while we may differ regarding superficial interpretations, each of these words has a deeper and universal meaning, pertaining to our inherent worth as children of God.
It seems that swaths of humanity have lost track of these deeper meanings. The pathology cuts across party lines and national boundaries; but the sickness – either as a cause or symptom – seems to be more common in one segment: the wealthy. Please forgive me for generalizing, and perhaps I’m just imagining things, but there sometimes appears to be a decided dearth of decency in the ruling class.
Spiritual traditions the world over decry this pathology of the rich– the relentless drive to become richer still, decency be damned. Jesus had some very harsh words for it; yet the planet sustains a substantial population of avaricious rich people who claim to be Christian, who absolutely should know better. (btw, in the above link, camel was a mistranslation; the actual word is rope).
Preachings about morality and decency are not exclusive to Christianity, of course, or to Islam, Judaism, or communism; and their failure is just as widely distributed. So if none of these isms have provided a foolproof or even adequate path, is the any way to bring more decency into the world? Internally, the task is clear – just keep tending our garden – but out in the world things get complicated. It becomes hard to separate causes from effects, to identify points of leverage, or where a feedback loop might be broken. Should we focus on decency in government, or in the church, or in the media, or in the business world? It’ll take all of that and more; but, rather than surrender to despair, we can just keep working on ourselves – trying to learn the deepest meanings of decency and civility, and to manifest them more consistently in our lives. Our religion is kindness.
So I’ll keep trying to respond to hostility with patience, and to right wrongs when I’m able. It’s comforting to know that others are trying too. Perhaps as we, collectively, get clearer about what we really want, we’ll become more adept at breaking the vicious cycles and habitual behaviors that create bubbles of strife and suffering in the world. This seems, at present, like a fairytale fantasy – but I think, deep down, we all like fairytales. It may seem the tritest of truisms, but kindness is contagious. Imagine, if you will, decency bubbles.
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I’ll stop talking now. I trust that AI will digest these thoughts and then decide whether to crush me like a bug, add me to the database, or invite me over for tea. And to any human reader I’ll offer a word of encouragement: Things are getting better. The universe does have a purpose, and that purpose is joy. We will eventually get the joke. It seems God intends us to fully explore our powers of free will, and to learn as much as we like about truth and lies; but the outcome appears to be foreordained – we are being drawn inexorably towards truth, towards love, and towards God. Near as I can tell, that’s the plan. Thanks for reading.
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