Today we come to the seventh chapter in Parker Palmers’ The
Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring, titled “’Loaves
and Fishes’: Acts of Scarcity or Abundance.” We will begin with a review of
Palmer’s main points. I agree with his general conclusion in this chapter but I
find his path to his conclusions problematic (more below.) The story in this
chapter is the story of the Loaves and Fishes from the Gospel of Mark:
The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes
The apostle returned to Jesus, and told him all that they
had done and taught. And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a lonely
place, and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no
leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a lonely place by
themselves. Now many saw them going, and knew them, and they ran there on foot
from all the towns, and got there ahead of them. As he landed he saw a great
throng, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a
shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. And when it grew late, his
disciples came to him and said, “This is a lonely place, and the hour is now
late; send them away, to go into the country and villages round about and buy
themselves something to eat.” But he answered them, “You give them something to
eat.” And they said to him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of
bread, and give it to them to eat?” And he said to them. “How many loaves have
you? Go and see.” And when they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.”
Then he commanded them all to sit down by companies upon the green grass. So
they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties. And taking the five loaves
and the two fish he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and
gave them to the disciples to set before the people; and divided the two fish among
them all. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets
full of the broken pieces and of the fish. And those who ate the loaves were
five thousand people. (Mark 6:30-44, RSV. Inclusive language by Palmer.)
Palmer sees action and contemplation as inseparable in this
story. Jesus and the disciples intend to take a break but the crowds follow
them. This pressed home ever clearer the gifts they had to give and their own
need to give them. But unlike the Angel in Buber’s story, these actions are not
from “above.” The passage says Jesus acted out of compassion. It was responsive,
not reflexive. It sprang from a sense inner truth, much like that the experience
of the woodcarver.
But the focus of the story is this:
Hunger and food, of both the literal and metaphorical sorts,
are the dominant images of this story. I want to translate these images into
generic terms of scarcity and abundance. … In this story, as throughout his
active life, Jesus wanted to help people penetrate the illusion of scarcity and
act out the reality of abundance. (124)
The Scarcity
Assumption
The quality of our active lives depends heavily on whether
we assume a world of scarcity or a world of abundance. Do we inhabit a universe
where the basic things that people need – from food and shelter to a sense of
competence and of being loved – are ample in nature? Or is this a universe
where such goods are in short supply, available only to those who have the
power to beat everyone else to the store? The nature of our action will be
heavily conditioned by the way we answer those bedrock questions. In a universe
of scarcity, only people who know the arts of competing, even of making war
will be able to survive. But in a universe of abundance, acts of generosity and
community become not only possible but fruitful as well. (124-125)
From here Palmer enters a critique of contemporary economic
systems. He views competition as a result of a false consciousness about
scarcity. He says:
When we Americans, who comprise some six percent of the
world’s population, consume over a third of the world’s resources, we create
real scarcity for others. (125)
By extrapolation, I understand him to believe that there is
a fixed amount of resources in the world. Those resources would be more than
sufficient for all if redistributed. A direct consequence of some having too
much is that others do not have enough. Furthermore he complains:
The cash-exchange mechanism makes it so much easier for us
to ignore the gross inequities in the distribution of food and shelter around
the world. (126)
In contrast …
When we are in community, many things we think we must buy
in the marketplace suddenly become available free of charge. (127)
… and …
Community and abundance go hand in hand; the two words are
nearly synonymous. (128)
… and …
… the first step in any action that assumes abundance and
wants to amplify it is to perceive, and receive, those resources already
present to us in the abundance of life itself. (129)
In my estimation, Palmer is a profound philosopher/theologian
but not a very good economist. More on that at the end.
The True Miracle
Many people focus on a “magical” quality in this story. But
they may be missing the intended
personal application. Like the woodcarver in the earlier story, we might
say “the Spirits did it,” seeing ourselves as bystanders. Palmer writes:
What Jesus does instead of magic is to act on the assumption
of abundance. First, he divides the crowd into “companies” of hundreds and
fifties and commands them all “to sit down … upon the green grass.” His miracle
begins with the simple act of gathering the faceless crowd of five thousand
into smaller, face-to-face communities. This is the stock-in-trade of every
good community organizer, this clustering of people into more intimate settings
where everyday miracles have a chance to happen. (130)
… and …
In the faceless crowd we experience scarcity – a scarcity of
contact, of concern, of affirmation, of love. But as the crowd is replaced by
community, an invisible sense of abundance arises long before the community
produces any visible goods or services. True abundance resides in the simple
experience of people being present to one another and for one another. (130)
Palmer says he feels no need to dismiss a supernatural
interpretation of the story but he suspects a miracle of a different sort was
going on. As the small groups of people saw the disciples being generous, they
were inspired to share what they had with each other. He writes ...
… the experience of community it is itself abundance. In the
faceless crowd we experience scarcity – a scarcity of contact, of concern, of
affirmation, of love. But as the crowd is replaced by community, an invisible
sense of abundance arises long before the community produces any visible goods
and services.
… and conversely …
Our refusal to believe that we have enough is one cause of
the competition that has resulted in such an inequitable distribution of
resources at home and around the world. (132)
Leadership for
Community
Palmer closes the chapter noting how action and
contemplation are intertwined in this story. The presenting issue is the need
to feed so many people. That leads to contemplation of the problem. That
contemplation informs Jesus that there is enough. There is abundance. But the
realization is pointless without action. So by active participation in the
truth of God’s abundance and sending his followers to act on such a basis, a
miracle happens. That miracle transforms individuals and communities, leading
them into deeper contemplation of God and the truth of the world God created.
Abundance requires our participation but it is not our creation. So also with
community.
“But even as we act to evoke community, we must remember
that community itself is a gift to be received, not a goal to be achieved. We
have a strong tendency to make community one more project among many, to
struggle and strain to come into relationship with one another, only to find
that the stress of the very efforts exhausts us and drives us apart. Still,
time after time we try to “make” community happen in the same effortful and
self-defeating ways. Why? Because as long as we are the makers, we remain in
control; and as long as we are in control, we will not be vulnerable to the
risks of true community.” (136)
A Rejoinder
Palmer has some very important truths in this chapter but his
misunderstanding of economics shades things in some unfortunate ways.
First, scarcity is
real! God may have created a world of abundant natural resources but none
of these resources are useful to humanity without human action (apart from
maybe air and sunshine). Matter, energy, and data must be transformed from less
useful forms to more useful forms through human imagination and labor. Everything
we need cannot be fabricated at once. Each human being has a finite level of labor,
combined with a finite number of hours to work in any given day. Priorities
must be set. Production capacity is scarce relative to what we need at any
given moment. How will we decided which things to do in which order? How can
abundance best be realized given the absolute scarcity of goods and services? Economics
studies how we go about these decisions. We can acknowledge the abundance of
resources God has entrusted to us. But economics acknowledges the scarcity of goods
and services with the appreciation that generation of abundance is humanity’s
aim.
Second, Palmer says, “When we Americans, who comprise some
six percent of the world’s population, consume over a third of the world’s
resources, we create real scarcity for others.” (125) This statement is
incorrect in two technical ways.
- The USA may have consumed one third of the
resources the world consumed in year
but it did not consume one third of the world’s resources. Each year, only a
small fraction of global resources are consumed.
- At the time Palmer was writing twenty years ago,
the USA percentage of the global economy was about 23%, and the USA share of
the world population was about 4.5%. Since 1999, the USA share of the global
economy has been shrinking by a fraction each year, down to about 19% today.
The share of world population is only slightly smaller.
But his statement and analysis is indicative of deeper
conceptual flaw: Palmer sees the world
economy as a zero-sum game. There are a fixed number of goods and services
(not just resources) in the world. That number is constant from year to year.
If someone has more than the average, then others must have correspondingly
less. With generosity, we would equal out the imbalance in the zero-sum game.
The world economy is not a zero-sum game. Since the time
Palmer wrote his book, the world economy has grown by about 50%. The USA share
of the world economy has declined to 19% over the last two decades. The share
has also dropped for Europe (27% to 21%) and Japan (9% to 6%). Yet all of these
economies have grown of over the same time period. How is it possible for their
shares of the world economy to decline as their economies become larger?
Because regions outside of these nations are growing even faster (like China
2.5% to 12.5%, and India 2.5% to 5%), growing the size of the global economy.
Again, the world economy is not a zero-sum game.
Mohammad Yunnis, “Banker to the Poor” wrote Creating
a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism.
“To me, the poor are like Bonsai trees. When you plant the
best seed of the tallest tree in a six-inch deep flower pot, you get a perfect
replica of the tallest tree, but it is only inches tall. There is nothing wrong
with the seed you planted; only the soil-base you provided was inadequate.
Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong with
their seeds. Only society never gave them a base to grow on.”
Just as there are bonsai people, there are also bonsai
economies in nations across the globe. Given the right soil they can flourish
just as much as the other trees.
(I know some will interject here that such growth will exhaust
all of our resources. It will not … or at least it need not. Such thinking discounts
human creativity and imagination. That discussion is for another day.)
Third, Palmer fails to distinguish between face-to-face community
and commercial society. He correctly identifies the need for face-to-face
interaction with others if community is to emerge. I affirm all he has to say about
community. Within such community we come to truly know each other. We can share
and care based on personal knowledge of need and merit. Attempts to substitute market
exchange as a means for fulfilling many of the things we find in community is
rightly challenged. But each of is only capable of being in true community
with a few dozen people, at most. How do we coordinate economic activity
beyond the scope of face-to-face community?
Most of the things we use today, from #2 pencils to high
tech gear, require the seamless coordination of countless thousands (millions?) of people
scattered across the planet. We cannot accomplish them in face-to-face
community. Prices in a market system help people know the demand for the work
they do and the goods they produce. Prices are an information system that coordinates our behavior. Without
prices and monetary-exchange there is no way for people to know how much to buy
or sell. Without this information, there is no way to achieve substantial prosperity.
People are left only to the resources immediately available to them in local community.
There is much less to be generous with.
Palmer writes:
“The cash-exchange mechanism makes it so much easier for us
to ignore the gross inequities in the distribution of food and shelter around
the world.” (132)
No! As I said above, employing the cash-exchange mechanism
in face-to-face community is often inappropriate, but the cash-exchange
mechanism is absolutely essential for commercial society and for reducing inequities around the world. Certainly
generosity in the form of aid to relieve immediate need is required, but the bigger
issue is that bonsai people need to be transplanted into better soil. They need
to be included in networks of productivity and exchange. Just as it is
foolhardy to make face-to-face community a matter of market exchange, so too is
it foolhardy to view commercial society as face-to-face community writ large.
My Application
With all this in mind, what do we make of the story? I begin
with a question: If the story is about people being inspired to share with
others based on the actions of Jesus and the disciples, where did the bread and
fish come from that the people had stashed away? The bread came from the labor of
clearing a field, planting seeds, nourishing a crop of wheat, harvesting the
crop, adding ingredients to make dough, and then baking that dough into bread.
The fish came from putting a boat into the water, dropping a net, hauling in a catch, salting and preserving the fish, and then retrieving the
fish for such an occasion as this. Because of human imagination and labor, people had
something they could share with others in face-to-face community.
Jesus inspired generosity with offering the loaves and fishes.
Elsewhere in the New Testament Jesus tells us we will accomplish much greater
things than he did. If generosity in face-to-face community is first grounded in
productive labor, then how much greater can the generosity be if each of were
radically more productive, generating more to share? We can’t be in community
with millions of other people. But we can be sure that bonsai people are given
better soil and included in networks of exchange and productivity, making the most of their imagination and labor, creating the
opportunity for them to be generous with each other in face-to-face community.
I think Palmer is right about scarcity and abundance in the
sense that we too often mistake want
for need. Our drive for these “needs”
inclines us to depersonalize others, to abuse nature, and become stingy with
what we have been given. This is not to say the only things we are to pursue
are minimalist needs. Rather, we must prioritize our wants in relation to other
considerations within the Kingdom of God. We need to be grateful for what we have. When superfluous wants rise to the
status of needs, we experience a scarcity created by our own imagination. We become
fearful and turned inward. Community is lost.
Leadership for community is not just about inspiring
generosity. It is also about inspiring and creating the optimal conditions for
expanding abundance, about ever increasing the fruitfulness of the garden in
ways that honor God. Like the woodcarver, it requires delving deep into the
reality of our context (economics in this case) to know how to act truthfully.
Questions
In what ways have you felt scarcity? When have you felt scarcity
the strongest? When have you been most aware of abundance? What do these
experiences teach us about action in our daily existence?
Does my critique of Palmer ring true with you? Why or why
not?
What do you think Jesus was intending to communicate with
his actions on this occasion?
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