Monday, May 08, 2006
(11:31 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
On the old saw, "It's hypocritical to complain about economic injustice when you could be doing more to help the poor"
The problem with this commonly used dictum is two-fold:- It presumes that every social phenomenon is the simple aggregate of individual choices, so that individually giving to the poor is the best way to create a situation in which the poor are better off. Aside from convincing others to do the same (usually through "changing hearts, one at a time"), this is the only thing that one can do, the only thing that it is one's business to do.
- At the same time, it paradoxically militates against any concrete action to help the poor -- good Christian that the speaker is, his or her moral duty has been discharged in the exposure of hypocrisy.
But there is another, more radical approach one could also take to this -- one that takes this "old saw" at its word. If I really think that there's enough to go around and that the hoarding of personal property creates not only waste but social alienation, then why not simply divest myself of all but the barest necessities? If I think that people's needs can in fact be met without recourse to private property, then why not make myself a living experiment? There are obvious practical reasons this is not often done, but one significant one is that it's considered simply immoral to make oneself a burden to others unnecessarily. Yet if I want to show people that the hoarding of property is unnecessary, then what better way to do it than to make myself the example -- and then emotionally blackmail them into helping me demonstrate this, since they won't want to watch their acquaintance starve?
This, it seems to me, is the fundamental genius of the economic teachings in the Gospels. It's not just the tedious feel-good affair of "sharing and caring," but rather forcing people's hands, turning one's very bodily need into a force that combats against the dominant system. The "ethics of hospitality" in the New Testament are on that account much more radical than the teachings of Levinas or Derrida, who still allow "the subject" to be primarily host and to hold onto a certain modicum of responsibility and emotional pathos -- the Gospels inculcate a radical irresponsibility and recklessness. Their "ethics of hospitality" are not a matter of being a good host, but of being a good guest.
Think of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The teacher of the law asks who his neighbor is, and through the telling of the story, Jesus says in essence, "Your neighbor is the man you hate, the man whose help you would refuse in any other situation, but who reaches out his hand to you in your moment of radical need." What does "Go and do likewise?" mean except, "Go and get the shit beaten out of you and lie down on the side of the road, then see what happens?" One could trace this thread throughout the entire New Testament, whose fundamental message is that the Crucified is the Imperator -- in the place of normal human agency, radical human need and exposure is established, which then becomes its own kind of active power, perhaps the strongest power in that it has nothing to lose. This is the messianic hope.
