Eyes and Ears: An Ethical Trope on the OWS Mantra

An ethical trope.

I don’t write that much on ethics; it’s not that I don’t like to think about ethics, nor is it that I don’t think that ethics aren’t important. It’s just, usually, I don’t make it there as much in my own reading and research; although that is starting to change. In fact I have John Webster’s Barth’s ethics of reconciliation sitting on my desk to prove it. In fact ethics will become more of a sounding board for me in days to come; especially as I am able to push (slowly but surely) into my doctoral research on the vicarious humanity of Christ. But this post is more applied than simply talking abstract ethics.

Not to long ago I posted a knee jerk post on the Occupy Wall Street movement; in that post I offered a critique of elements within its environs that seemed to find their gusto from neo-Marxist theory. So I offered, from another context in a book I was reading at the time, an attempted critique of both Marxist theory and its spawned Liberation Theology. Again, this post is not intended to primarily rehash that dead horse (i.e. that former post of mine). But what I want to briefly articulate does dovetail with the issues under consideration in that former post; and what I want to communicate in this post is clearly of ethical import.

The more and more I have pondered this, the more convinced I have become that the mantra that OWS folk have been trumpeting—e.g. the 99% V. the 1%—is absolutely spot on. In case you have failed to realize (like most of the American media, at least at first), the 99% are the socio-economically impoverished who make up most of the third world and so called developing world (like China, India, etc.). My point in this post is terse and simple; it is absolutely true that “we” (like us Americans and most of the West) currently consume and live off of the slave labor that produces the goods that we consume. How, for example, this is any different than the Nazi Germans who lived off of the backs of the Jews (through their work camps and scientific experiments) is not imminently clear to me. So, in principle, it seems more Christian to support the chant of OWS than not (de jure).

At this point in the conversation, usually, we become overwhelmed by such a situation. We sense an ethical dilemma with no real way out (and I mean concrete steps for providing resolution to this obvious and real life dilemma). Our response, like the Germans who lived under Nazi rule, is to put our heads in the proverbial sand and pretend like things aren’t really as bad as they are; and by so doing we only enable the continued status quo to reign—in fact we normalize this consumerist relationship by glossing it with terms like consumerism, instead of what it is … a Master-slave relationship (US as the proverbial ‘Masters’). In fact, I know, that as you read what I am writing right now; you are uncomfortable, maybe even squirming, and wishing I would just shut up already. Or you are thinking that what I am writing is fine and dandy, but what am “I” doing about? In short, you are getting upset with me.

I don’t have any easy answers. But if this makes you feel guilty; good! Of course that is nowhere to stop, we have to do something about it. But what? I don’t know, I am praying about it. One of the primary things you can do about it is share your faith in Christ. If we are going to offer a solution it will be only through the proclaimed Word of Jesus Christ himself. People need eyes to see and ears to hear. The OWS people need to have these eyes and ears too; their message, in my estimation is incomplete without the Gospel of Jesus Christ (and I mean proclaimed and lived … these two go hand in hand in and through Christ himself). Thanks for reading.