A Wee Blether

In Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, Bill McKibben writes,

“I would be content if this book helped shake our ingrained belief that growth is still an obvious necessary goal our our economy–content if the reader wondered a little the next time he or she heard some newscaster happily declare that the economy had gotten 3% percent larger.  And content, as well, if my work helped shake the idea that there was no alternative to growth save miserable recession.”

Well, McKibben should be content, then, as his book did that and more for this reader.

McKibben has written for The New Yorker, and is the author of, among others, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, The End of Nature, and The Comforting Whirlwind: God, Job, and the Scale of Creation.

I found Deep Economy a great read, as it both did well to name some of the ridiculousness of our current consumer culture, and provided glimpses into other better ways.

The book is broken into five sections.  The first, “After Growth” chronicles how the economy and society changed after the invention of the steam engine.  This section includes a discussion on both the environmental impact of growth — basically, bad — and the sociological impact — not quite as good as we’d like to think.

I’ll let you guess what section two is about, “The Year of Eating Locally,” but it does have a more hopeful feel because a) it’s nearly possible to eat completely locally in many parts of the US and b) buying and eating local is a fast-growing trend.

The third section, “All for One, or One for All” investigates America’s passion for individualism through many different lenses, making the — almost Christian — argument for a new way to vision community.

Fourthly, in “The Wealthy of Communities” McKibben takes the reader deeper into such communities of mutual support and local-mindset who have a different idea of progress than just that of one where the individual prospers.

Finally, “The Durable Future” anticipates the positive places such a philosophy could take a culture.  McKibben’s vision isn’t quite rosy, but I appreciated that it’s not as dour as some environmentalists.

Though sometimes a bit plodding with statistics and stories, I found Deep Economy to be a fair, though troubling assessment of where our consumer culture has taken us.  At many points I appreciated how easily his prose and perspective could be adapted in Christian circles.  I can only hope that more will heed McKibben’s words and begin to make choices, buy products, and sustain relationships that make our economy not just deeper, but richer too.