#77 Growth Dilemmas 2/09
It’s hard not to have a love-hate relationship with growth. On the one
hand, everybody wants things to grow. We nurture little children, coax
seedlings into healthy plants, incubate new businesses, invest in emerging
talents with the hopes that they will make it big time.
Yet growth can be a problem. It’s not always true that if something is
good, more of it must be better. My six-foot five son is relieved that he
has finally stopped getting taller. Enormous impersonal consolidated high
schools are now being broken up into smaller units more conducive to human
interaction and learning. And we would do anything to stop those cancer
cells from growing.
How do we balance these two truths about growth? It’s easiest with children
and other living things, where we don’t have a whole lot of control. They
will grow, for the most part, until they are at their mature size, and then
they’ll stop. Some mysterious internal mechanism knows when they are big
enough, when more growth would actually hinder their long-term ability to
survive.
But with our human-made institutions, we have no such internal regulator,
and our deeply culturally-embedded belief that bigger must be better is
getting us into more and more trouble. Nowhere is this more true than in
the economy, where growth has become enshrined as a central, unquestionable,
quasi-religious, belief. Our well-being, we are told, is dependent on an
ever-growing economy: more markets, more consumption, more loans, more
debt, more hedge funds on Wall Street.
Yet this economic system is looking less and less like a little child that
needs to grow, and more and more like a seven foot person who’s having
trouble fitting into ordinary spaces and showing no signs of slowing
down—-more and more like a cancer growing out of control.
The idea of continuous growth inevitably runs into the limits of the system
that contains it. Our growth economy is running through the stored wealth of
a finite planet, paying dividends in the present by running up debts against
the future, while becoming ever less effective in meeting people’s real
needs. We find ourselves in the surreal situation of being strong-armed
into spending ever more money on things we don't really need in order to
keep a system afloat that has become unmoored from reality and common sense.
Luckily there are other ways to think about growth. It doesn’t just have to
be about being bigger. After all, we have confidence that our children can
continue to grow after they reach their full height. We look forward to
them becoming smarter, more able, more mature, even wiser. It’s harder with
the economy. We’ve accepted growth in this area as a good thing for so long
that it seems like a law of nature. But nature is crying out against it, and
what we have made, we can change. (Though our economic high priests could
use some help from ordinary folks here—-like the child who pointed out that
the emperor had no clothes). We can trade in this outmoded model centered on
bigger for one centered on smarter, cut out the cancerous growth, and start
learning all the joys as well as the challenges of finding our place within
the constraints of a finite planet.
Overcoat
Cleaning this room requires disposing of the old men’s overcoat
Picked up from a discard pile somewhere
To warm a girlfriend unprepared for cold one day
It’s big and warm.
One button’s missing, easy enough to fix from my accumulated store
Whoever gets it need not be ashamed.
I do it right, with little button sewed behind
To make it strong.
I see the other buttons loose, one dangling
No work at all to make them tight
Then sew the lining where the seam has come undone
It’s looking good.
One final check, and now I see the button holes
Raw edges crying out for neat repair
This is a bigger job, but now I’ve come so far,
I cannot stop.
I learned to button hole in childhood, do it well.
The coat is ready now to give away, will serve somebody well
Though why I spent this time
Is hard to know.
My son comes home from warmer climes and finds the coat
Shrugs himself into it, checks it out
The battered elegance suits his style, looks good on him.
My loving care intended for a stranger finds its mark
More close to home.
hand, everybody wants things to grow. We nurture little children, coax
seedlings into healthy plants, incubate new businesses, invest in emerging
talents with the hopes that they will make it big time.
Yet growth can be a problem. It’s not always true that if something is
good, more of it must be better. My six-foot five son is relieved that he
has finally stopped getting taller. Enormous impersonal consolidated high
schools are now being broken up into smaller units more conducive to human
interaction and learning. And we would do anything to stop those cancer
cells from growing.
How do we balance these two truths about growth? It’s easiest with children
and other living things, where we don’t have a whole lot of control. They
will grow, for the most part, until they are at their mature size, and then
they’ll stop. Some mysterious internal mechanism knows when they are big
enough, when more growth would actually hinder their long-term ability to
survive.
But with our human-made institutions, we have no such internal regulator,
and our deeply culturally-embedded belief that bigger must be better is
getting us into more and more trouble. Nowhere is this more true than in
the economy, where growth has become enshrined as a central, unquestionable,
quasi-religious, belief. Our well-being, we are told, is dependent on an
ever-growing economy: more markets, more consumption, more loans, more
debt, more hedge funds on Wall Street.
Yet this economic system is looking less and less like a little child that
needs to grow, and more and more like a seven foot person who’s having
trouble fitting into ordinary spaces and showing no signs of slowing
down—-more and more like a cancer growing out of control.
The idea of continuous growth inevitably runs into the limits of the system
that contains it. Our growth economy is running through the stored wealth of
a finite planet, paying dividends in the present by running up debts against
the future, while becoming ever less effective in meeting people’s real
needs. We find ourselves in the surreal situation of being strong-armed
into spending ever more money on things we don't really need in order to
keep a system afloat that has become unmoored from reality and common sense.
Luckily there are other ways to think about growth. It doesn’t just have to
be about being bigger. After all, we have confidence that our children can
continue to grow after they reach their full height. We look forward to
them becoming smarter, more able, more mature, even wiser. It’s harder with
the economy. We’ve accepted growth in this area as a good thing for so long
that it seems like a law of nature. But nature is crying out against it, and
what we have made, we can change. (Though our economic high priests could
use some help from ordinary folks here—-like the child who pointed out that
the emperor had no clothes). We can trade in this outmoded model centered on
bigger for one centered on smarter, cut out the cancerous growth, and start
learning all the joys as well as the challenges of finding our place within
the constraints of a finite planet.
Overcoat
Cleaning this room requires disposing of the old men’s overcoat
Picked up from a discard pile somewhere
To warm a girlfriend unprepared for cold one day
It’s big and warm.
One button’s missing, easy enough to fix from my accumulated store
Whoever gets it need not be ashamed.
I do it right, with little button sewed behind
To make it strong.
I see the other buttons loose, one dangling
No work at all to make them tight
Then sew the lining where the seam has come undone
It’s looking good.
One final check, and now I see the button holes
Raw edges crying out for neat repair
This is a bigger job, but now I’ve come so far,
I cannot stop.
I learned to button hole in childhood, do it well.
The coat is ready now to give away, will serve somebody well
Though why I spent this time
Is hard to know.
My son comes home from warmer climes and finds the coat
Shrugs himself into it, checks it out
The battered elegance suits his style, looks good on him.
My loving care intended for a stranger finds its mark
More close to home.
posted by Pamela Haines | 5:44 PM
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