The gods of productivity and efficiency

I have been working on our Bible study of Exodus. In the notes, I have come across some comments by Walter Brueggemann that are found in the New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. 1 Exodus. What he had to say parallels what I have been reading in "Deep Economy" by Bill McKibben. What McKibben talks mostly about is the present way we go about our lives striving to have more and more. As we gather all this material information, study after study points out that we are not happier than we were prior to having all the choices and lifestyle that we have today. There seems to be such a disconnect with our sense of happiness in our "hyperindividualism." Even when I was teaching sociology and social work, I frequently commented that there seems to be more concern about what the individual wants that the sense of community has fallen to the wayside. I have been concerned about this loss in our neighborhoods, our society, and even in our world. This seems to be not what God intends for us. Yet, even in churches today it seems to revolve about meeting my needs rather than being concerned about others. So that we can turn a blind eye on the exploitation of people in other parts of the world that support our style of living. We continue to buy cars, SUV's, and other vehicles that use an extraordinary amount of oil and then complain that we cannot have cheap oil or food because we want food that is out of season where we live.
McKibben states, "Fast, cheap and easy is what we have at the moment, they are the cardinal virtues upon which our economy rests (and if they are also adjectives you don't want attached to your child, well, that should give you a little pause). The word we use to sum up these virtues is "efficiency," and on its altar we have sacrificed a good deal: our small farms were inefficient compared with factory farms; our local retailers were inefficient compared with Wal-Mart; having free time is inefficient compared with working more hours. Relationships were inefficient compared with things. And, in a certain, limited sense, each of these ideas is correct. If you leave certain factors (pollution, say and unhappiness) out of account, we've built a society more efficient than any the world has ever seen" (pg 120). Research shows that instead of people working fewer hours they are working more hours or working more than one job. When asked what would make a person happier the number one answer was more money. In fact, we have gotten information about what people want most from church and the answer is recreation. Somehow I was not surprised.
McKibben goes on to say that something needs to change and that it is not a liberal, conservative, Democratic, Republican, social conservatives and environmental progressives agenda. "At the risk of betraying my background as a Sunday school teacher, let me say that these changes seem to me, at least in some measure, to be compatible with strong faith.
Consider an obvious example that makes this point clear. The most inefficient idea our society ever embraced was originally a Jewish inspiration: the Sabbath, a day set aside for relationships with family and with God and with the world around us. For much of American history, things stopped on the Sabbath...The seventh day offered a chance to rebalance your life a little...What brought down [the blue laws] was precisely the understanding that they were inefficient--they reduced the amount of business that could get done, the amount of money that could be made" (pgs 120-121). He points out the biggest supporter in Virginia to repeal the blue laws was the Chamber of Commerce.
In our study of Exodus, we are studying how the Pharaoh attempted to keep the people of Israel subjugated. Especially when Moses came to ask permission for the people to go worship. Walter Brueggemann commented, "The strategy of Pharaoh is worth study. His notion is that the pressure of productivity is the way to keep social relations from changing. That is, the lazy and unproductive have time to listen to voices that authorize dangerous changing. Productivity numbs attention to the voice of new possibility. This mode of enslavement is worth considering in a society that is aimed at the acquisition of goods in the pursuit of greed and affluence.
Two dimensions of numbing through productivity might be identified. On the one hand, consumerism, the driving ideology of Western society, is based in the capacity to produce and acquire wealth as a sign of personal worth. While production quotas may not be as abusive and demeaning as in this narrative, the pressure to produce and achieve is enormous in our society, so enormous that it robes energy from every chance for justice and freedom. On the other hand (and more subtly), in a moral posture that is focused on “doing,” even the doing or “goodness” leads to a passion for busyness that leaves little time for “being.” One can imagine that the exodus narrative is an exercise in weaning the imagination of the listening community away from an ideology of productivity, in order to have room and energy to “be.” Pp 730 NIB Vol 1
It is something that we need to reflect on in our lives. How happy are we? What will make us happy? I challenge that more work, more money, more things will ever lead to more happiness. I believe it is in community, relationship, and mostly in our relationship with God that will bring us any sense of happiness. The pursuit of the other goals will only lead to further destruction of our world spiritually, physically, and relationally.