The Story of Accumulation
Gareth Higgins shares why the story of accumulation, which is second nature to most of us in West, can be so damaging:
The accumulation story is about money and fear. It’s a story about being possessed by things rather than enjoying and sharing them. And it’s a story nested within a bigger story about how sometimes when we think we have more, we actually have less…. Whether it’s bigger sofas or bigger houses or bigger jobs or bigger bank accounts or reputation or ego or a bigger empire, we don’t have to look too far to find the accumulation story at work. The story that says we will achieve peace and security through having more things. It’s an expansionist narrative, but it doesn’t expand peace and security. The more you think you need to accumulate, the bigger fence you need to build around yourself and the fewer people you will trust and let into your life. It’s the inverse of what it means to live in true peace and security, which only comes in the context of relationship with people you can trust. [1]
Author Lynne Twist names the malignant effects of buying into the accumulation story:
Money has only the power that we assign to it, and we have assigned it immense power. We have given it almost final authority. If we look only at behavior, it tells us that we have made money more important than we are, given it more meaning than human life. Humans have done and will do terrible things in the name of money. They have killed for it, enslaved other people for it, and enslaved themselves to joyless lives in pursuit of it…. We all, at one time or another, have demeaned and devalued ourselves, taken advantage of people, or engaged in other actions we’re not proud of in order to get or keep money or the power we believe it can buy. [2]
Richard Rohr often critiques the story of accumulation:
Jesus is absolute about money and power because he knows what we’re going to do. Most of us will serve this god called mammon. Luke’s Gospel even describes mammon as a type of illness, as Jesuit John Haughey (1930–2019) explained: “Mammon is not simply a neutral term in Luke. It is not simply money. It connotes disorder…. Mammon becomes then a source of disorder because people allow it to make a claim on them that only God can make.” [3] “Mammon illness” takes over when we think all of life is counting, weighing, measuring, and deserving.
To participate in the reign of God, we have to stop counting. We have to stop hoarding in order to let the flow of forgiveness and love flow through us. The love of God can’t be doled out by any process whatsoever. We can’t earn it. We can’t lose it. As long as we stay in this world of accumulation, of earning and losing, we’ll live in perpetual resentment, envy, or climbing. [4
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A blessing from Gareth Higgins
| A BLESSING FOR THE NEXT STEP It’s no wonder you want to be a peacemaker, for you have seen so much conflict. It’s no wonder you want to heal shame, for you have been a home for humiliation. It’s no wonder that you have sat in the ashes of loneliness, for you have been scapegoated to the point of wanting to die. It’s no wonder that you want to transform supremacist stories, scapegoating stories, selfish stories, separation stories, for you know the weight of what happenswhen humans do not do their inner work. So May you go to places of most delighted knowing with friendsand deepest intimacy with loversand through the dangerous, exhilarating woodsof activism with comrades. May you emerge into spacious places, finding reassurance that you did not deserveto be burdened by other people’s shadows. May you discover that poisonous shame is built on a lieand your loneliness is not the end. May you find the path to honest amends for your mistakesand repair for the hurt you have known. As the pain is healed and the gifts come into bloom,may they dance with each other. May the fruit of kindness and solidarity be full on your lips. And may you discover, and carefully hold,a vision of what you’re here for. Brilliantly creative, courage when you need it, with all the community you want, woven into the fabric of this moment’s crisis,and this moment’s gift. A sovereign, a lover, a magician, a warrior-protector for the common good. May your wound transform first into a scar, and then a medicine story. |
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