Unsettling Dialogue (part 2)

If a consumer begins to think and act in consideration of his responsibilities, 

then he vastly increases his capacities as a person.

-Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America

We like to talk a lot about our rights. We have constitutional amendments that we define as the Bill of Rights.  There are organizations and groups that are devoted to defending the rights of certain groups of people, or certain rights of all people.  We sometimes argue about what is and is not a right, and consensus on that subject is by no means easy to come by.  Mr. Wendell lifts up a rather important counterbalance to rights: responsibility.  I hear a lot about people claiming their rights, as citizens, as parents, as consumers, but mostly what you see with regard to responsibility is rather the opposite.

There is a good reason for this: 

It may be that when one hands one's responsibilities to an organization, one becomes by that divestiture irresponsible.  It may be that responsibility is intransigently a personal matter - that a responsibility can be fulfilled or failed, but cannot be got rid of.

Groups and communities can help you with your rights, inalienable and otherwise, but with regard to living up to your responsibilities, you are by definition on your own.  This is a bugaboo of modern politics: people confuse rights and responsibilities and do not adequately recognize the intricate and intimate connection of the two.  When people complain that their rights have been violated, one of the exploitative responses is to point out that they somehow failed their responsibility.  We see this rather brutally played out in the criminal justice system where incarceration rates are abysmally out of balance with regard to black folks.  When you point out that injustice, an inevitable response is, well "they" are criminals, meaning people who have broken faith with the laws and responsibilities of citizenship. The drastic failure of responsibility in criminal behavior is the excuse for many people to never examine the systemic inequality that leads to a statistically observable injustice. Politicians of a certain bent will say that anyone who points to the flaw is "soft" or "weak on crime," but in doing so they are failing their responsibility as public servants, which is to provide for the common good. The common good, in my mind would mean a just society from bottom to top. Injustice at any level compromises the common good. Inversely, if a criminal blames the system for his bad behavior, he is also failing his responsibility to be a law abiding citizen.  The web of responsibility is complicated, the idea of rights is simple by comparison, so it's easier to shout about.
Many people would rather relinquish their rights than assume full responsibility, we would rather be safe than free.  Those who covet power are not ashamed to exploit this weakness, and Berry points out that this is not just a slogan of revolutionaries and dissidents, it applies to our habits as consumers:

People whose governing habit is the relinquishment of power, competence and responsibility, and whose characteristic suffering is the anxiety of futility, make excellent spenders. They are the ideal consumers. By inducing in them little panics of boredom, powerlessness, sexual failure, mortality, paranoia, they can be made to buy (or vote for) virtually anything that is "attractively packaged." The advertising industry is founded upon this principle.

Have we become a people that could be described that way?  I think so, more than I would like to admit personally.  Consumption can absolutely be a drug used to numb the anxiety of existence. When I buy something I want I feel good, when I buy something I have convinced myself I need, I feel even better.  I can be convinced by politicians that if I vote for them they will do the things I agree with and want for my country, even though they have been proven liars for far too long.  I think that we even apply a consumer mindset to our spiritual lives and worshiping communities.  Churches have, all too often used the tools of advertising and the exploitative mindset to take power away from people and put it in the hands of a hierarchy or a cult of personality.  It does not serve us well in the long run, because Christ, our center was in fact a paradigm of responsibility, not just for himself, but for other people.  He revealed the moral rules of the law to be founded upon a broader, communal standard: "love one another."
The exploitative consumer is incapable of loving anything other than their own appetites.  Love is reduced to lust, industriousness and ingenuity are reduced to greed, noble ambition is reduced to power grabbing.  What is the way out?

What has not been often said, because it did not need to be said until fairly recent times, is that the responsible consumer must also be in some way a producer. Out of his own resources and skills, he must be equal to some of his own needs.

This is, I think, why I feel so good after I go out and cut up a dead tree and split the logs for firewood, rather than just going down to the store and buying a bundle of firewood for $5.  The fire feels warmer, I swear it does.  This is why I feel proud any time I can take something old and fix it or, re-purpose some bit of junk I have laying around.  This is why I am sort of in love with the idea of hunting, even if I'm a bit troubled by killing, the idea of providing something to eat from the wild and connecting with the food chain.  It's why I like to garden, even if I put way more money (and time) into it than it's actually worth.  It's why I bother with a compost bin where I slowly try and create good humus from peels and grounds.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still a fairly inveterate consumer. I have not grasped my own responsibility firm enough to go off the grid and live as a hunter gatherer.  I still use Amazon.com as a drug to break me out of a funk.  That's why I'm calling this a dialogue, because it's not one sided, it goes back and forth between what I would like to be and what I am.