This excerpt is from the Substack newsletter Money and Meaning, a post called "The Tragedy of Always Getting More." (June 21, 2023). We gratefully use it with permission from the author, Douglas Tsoi, founder of the School for Financial Freedom.
In Part 1, we learned that average Americans have four times the amount of "stuff" they did 50 years ago. We also learned that after needs have been met, the pursuit of more material things does not lead to higher satisfaction. Instead, the neglect of higher level needs leaves people unfulfilled. In Part 2, we look at the solution to answering the human need for more.
The next tasks
Galbraith’s warning (see Part 1) reminds me of the American mystic Thomas Merton:
“Why do we spend our lives striving to be something that we would never want to be, if only we knew what we wanted? Why do we waste our time doing things which, if we only stopped to think about them, are just the opposite of what we were made for?” So I’ll ask this personally to you: Do you have enough? Do you have more than enough? Is constantly getting more keeping you from what you were really made for?
When I trained to become a Franciscan spiritual director, in our first lesson, Sister Mary Jo asked us to sit in silence for a period of time and contemplate the question: What is your deepest desire? In Franciscan spirituality, when you find your deepest desire, you find God. You don’t find God in letting go of your desires or sacrificing yourself, but in finding the thing you want most. If you spent time contemplating “What is your deepest desire?” what would you come up with?
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I asked the AI machine Chat GPT that very same question. It replied:
“Our deepest longing is to feel connected, to feel loved, and to be accepted. We all want to feel like we belong and that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. We want to be accepted for who we are and have our unique gifts and talents appreciated. We want to feel that we are connected to others in meaningful ways, that we are loved, and that we are seen and heard. We strive for a sense of purpose and meaning in our lives, and to know that we matter and make a difference.”
The sum of humanity’s knowledge and experience came down to that. I assume you had a similar answer for yourself.
In every religion, Western or Eastern, the goal is moving from “me” to “we.” Spiritual teacher Adyeshanti puts it: “the goal of all spirituality is to awaken from the dream of separation and let go into the reality of unity. Spirituality is letting go of effort, want, and control and seeing what happens. All suffering stems from the belief we are separate.”
Individualism, privilege, and status are the very things capitalism promotes. But the spiritual quest is a journey of surrender, dying to yourself and everything you thought you was you, to be reborn to something greater.
If you made a list of everything you own, everything you think of as you, everything that you prefer, that list would be the distance between you and the living truth. —Stephen Levine
For thousands of years, we were nourished by being members of a community, gathering around the fire, hearing the stories of the elders, feeling supported during times of loss and grief, offering gratitude, singing together, sharing meals at night and our dreams in the morning. I call these activities “primary satisfactions.” We are hard-wired to want them, but few of us receive them. In their absence, we turn to secondary satisfactions: rank, privilege, wealth, status — or, on the shadow side, addictions. The problem with these secondary satisfactions is that we can never get enough of them. We always want more. But once we find our primary satisfactions, we don’t want much else. — Francis Weller
Do you have enough? Is constantly getting more keeping you from your deepest desire? When you find your deepest desire, you find God. The primary satisfaction of belonging: moving from “me” to “we,” is as good a definition of God as I could imagine. Spirituality is a team game.
This life, a team game.
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How do the statements above stack up against the rugged individualism that we Americans have been raised on? The self-made person is an illusion, because there is a whole group of people who helped you along the way to getting where you are now.
If you have ever been on a team, you know that it does not win by allowing one person to hog the ball and attempt to make every point. When we put our focus on material accumulation, on getting it all for ourselves, it is similar to hogging the ball. This behavior can not only rob others of what they need, it can also rob us of satisfying our own true needs. In other words, the whole team loses.
In Philippians 2:4, we are asked to look out for the needs of others as well as for our own. This is the heart of economic mutuality. By finding contentment in enough, we are enabled to promote others' well being and find real satisfaction ourselves. By losing what we think is important, we find what truly is.
The best teams, the ones that make the playoffs and win the series, are the ones where everyone looks out for each other. If you are not already a member of the better capitalism "team," we invite you to join us as we promote and pursue economic mutuality for all.
Tired of "profit is evil" vs "maximize my profit by exploiting others," as if those are the only two options?
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