You Don't Need This "Recovery"

What happens when one reaches the limits of a vocabulary? Consider, for a moment, the curious case of the "recovery." 93% of gains so far have flowed to the top 1%. Median incomes in recovery are lower than they were before recovery. The bulk of jobs are concentrated in low-wage industries. If this is a recovery, then, it's a little like zombifying a patient and pronouncing him "healed" might be said to be — a "recovery" not composed of what a reasonable person might call "health," but more like a creepy reanimation.

What, then, does it mean for an economy to be "healthy"? Consider, for a moment, a few very different numbers.

• 9.8% of adults strongly agree that their life is close to their ideal.
• 19% of adults strongly agree that they are satisfied with their life.
• 21% of adults strongly agree that their life has a clear sense of purpose.
• 30% of adults strongly agree that on most days they feel a sense of accomplishment from what they do.

Surprised? Here's what I'd suggest: we might be in a eudaimonic depression. The real depression isn't merely a temporary lapse in economic "output" — but a depression of human potential; one of human significance squandered.

I'd argue that it's time to update the way we conceive of "an economy." Every traveler sees the road through the lens of his journey, and I'd bet most of us still see the economy through steaming, glowing industrial age eyes: a "healthy" economy is one that's buzzing with...billions of man hours spent at monolithic institutions mass-producing and mega-marketing rapidly commoditized largely disposable mostly trivial junk.

But perhaps there's more to the "health" of an economy than how many McWidgets it can churn out, more bigger faster cheaper nastier. Perhaps the health of "an economy" is better represented by the mental, physical, emotional, and social health of people's very real human lives. Perhaps what matters more than (yawn) the stuff we can buy is the stuff we can't. And, if you want to take the argument to the limit — as I'll argue in future posts — perhaps the very idea of "an economy" is itself an idea built in and for the industrial age.

Further, perhaps yesterday's logic of plenitude's "health" has run its course, just as the logic of bloodletting did for yesterday's physicians. This, after all, is what a paradigm shift means — not merely the naïve assertion that "stuff is gonna change"; but the conception that the dominant logic of a domain has broken down. The reason this "recovery" isn't much of one is because the economy itself is in transformation. Perhaps performing the mute steps of the clockwork dance above can no longer yield the bounty we once cheerily took for granted — because the more we denude ourselves of purpose, humanity, and meaning, the less demanding, capable, and able to realize our potential we become. Perhaps, at some threshold, having ascended into minimal material plenitude, eudaimonic depression yields material stagnation — and the more lost, alone, and bereft we feel in the human world, the less capable the gears of prosperity are.

So what can you and I do about this eudaimonic depression?

If we face an imperative, perhaps it's one as timeless and worn as bedrock: not merely to employ our selves to make the most, but to make the most of our tiny selves. Perhaps it's this imperative that is the bedrock of the human world, the only firmament solid enough to support the foundations of meaningful lives. And to this imperative, there are no easy answers — just hard questions. The questions we've been uncomfortably failing to ask for a long, long while. Hence, if you want some tiny advice, I'd say: craft a purpose. Find yourself . Mean it. Matter. Better.

Yet, let me confess. I make no claim to know how to live well. And each of us should rightly be suspicious of those who do, too frequently and too loud. If there's something resembling a catalog of mistakes, you and I know: our messy lives have been rich with them. Yet, that's the point. Condemned as we are to living in the human world, we damn ourselves if we reject the human world and substitute its painless, comfortable, sterile, calculated caricature. To be inhuman, yet exist in the human world — this is tragedy; the tragedy of exile.

Perhaps, like me, you feel it — the total weight of this exile — sometimes. The blues creep up on you, in the unlikeliest places, at the unlikeliest moments. Yet, sometimes, it's a sense of feeling desperately lost that grounds us in what it might mean to be found. At my favorite café, I often see the same scene: a dad slowly, lovingly feeding his palsied son with unremarkable, silent — infinite — care. It seems to me not just a tiny act of unconditional love, but a titanic kind of thankless grace and strength; an act of incendiary rebellion screaming into the moral emptiness of the smallness of our biggest choice, the choice to casually discard life, to toss aside the act of fully living, to be less than one's whole.

I don't want a revolution. I want a million tiny revolutions. Revolts not merely against, but for, towards, into. In a cold universe, nothing matters more than a tiny spark of life; living fully, wholly, incandescently, not merely "happily", but full of significance, infused with belonging, rich with meaning, seared us with love, spent with grace, consumed with purpose, hinting at the closest you and I have to a truth: none of us will be forever. But each of us is right here, right now.

We've spent a lot of time looking for the promised land. Building utopias, worshipping idols — these are amongst humanity's most natural, frequent aspirations. Despite ourselves, we haven't reached the end of our journey: I'd bet the farm that there will be whole new economies to model; whole new continents to explore; whole new worlds to save. Yet, perhaps the fact will remain: for you and I, in the living moment, there are no promised lands. Perhaps the human world is all we've got — and all we're sure to have. Hence, maybe, if there is an answer to the question "Is this all there is?" then the contours of that answer — mperfect, imprecise, painful, sharp with color — outline the shape of whom we are, have been, and will be.

Perhaps, from here, you and I can see all the way to the end of that vocabulary, project the limits of today's paradigm into the unborn future — observe, despite tomorrow's conquests and triumphs, exploration and discoveries, inventions and enterprise, like the speed of light bounds the physical universe, the constant that grounds the human universe: being, belonging, and becoming will, in the truest sense, remain what makes us human.

And maybe that's enough.

What happens when one reaches the limits of a vocabulary? Life. Live.