The “Abundance Agenda” is getting a lot of attention of late. I’ve mentioned the Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson book, Abundance: How Progress Is Made. I agree with them on a lot of their points.
Zoning restrictions, NIMBY-ism and environmental impact statements gone crazy have sometimes made it all but impossible to build anything. The ability of both the private and public sector to address our most pressing problems in housing, infrastructure, energy, and transportation has been hamstrung by endless process, review, and regulation.
But is material “abundance” the answer? The only answer? The best answer? As much as I like the Klein/Thompson book and the work of others in a similar vein, I am troubled by a nagging disquiet. Here it is: my hunch is that our problems are more spiritual/moral than they are material/technological.
To build my case I’ll return to the intriguing Substack journalist, Freya India, and her recent piece on “Why We Doubt Everything.” India, who is 20-something, focuses mainly on the issues of young people and of girls in particular (the name of her Substack blog is “Girls”). Her point here is not that her peers have religious doubts, but that they swim in a veritable sea of doubt. Doubt about everything.
“It’s often said,” she writes, “that my generation has lost faith. We are losing faith in God, losing faith in love, losing faith in the future. But I’m not sure that’s entirely true. Closer to the truth, I think, is we never learnt faith to begin with . . . We are a chronically doubtful generation.
“Understandably, since we live in a culture of doubt. Generations before us had it harder, at least materially, but in their world, even as it sometimes fell apart, something beneath stayed intact: customs, understanding, a shared floor and foundation.
“Ours is one where all that underneath has been destroyed. We have everything, except anything that holds humans together. Whatever we try to have faith in is mocked, destroyed, or disappears too fast. And so we doubt. We question everything. We doubt what it means to live, what it means to love, what it means to be a good person, why any of that matters. Nothing is certain. And so, no, we aren’t so much in doubt as to whether we will live tomorrow, but whether there is any point to [things].” (emphasis added)
It is true for some, who were raised in very conservative religious environments, that the ability to ask questions and express doubt has been liberating and healing. I get that, and I honor it.
But that’s not what India is talking about. She’s saying her generation has, from the get-go, been surrounded by doubt, maybe distrust, about everything. That is not only a tough way to live and build a life, but as she suggests later in her essay, “it is exhausting.” Maybe the more accurate way to describe what she’s calling “doubt” would be “pervasive distrust” or “cynicism” or perhaps “nihilism.” But those are abstract words for what feels like gnawing doubt and anxiety where there’s nothing solid or reliable to hold onto, in which we trust.
Meanwhile, a kind of anxiety-based-industrial complex is making money off all the pervasive doubt and distrust. Here’s more from Freya India:
“So young people haven’t lost faith, but have been trained to doubt. Not only by culture, but by companies that profit from our uncertainty. Industries designed to introduce and indulge doubt. Social media, dating apps, the mental-health industry—all promise to solve the very doubt they depend on. For every uncertain feeling the medical industry has a diagnosis, an explanation, an expert at hand. For every doubt about who to be with, dating apps present a new person, a premium package, a faster algorithm. But it is all a devil’s bargain. These industries feed exactly what they promise to fix.”
The new Abundance theorists ask, “why can’t we build anything anymore?” They mean bullet trains, bridges, and alternative-energy-generation projects, supersonic aircraft. Fair enough. But I would ask a different question. “Why can’t we build anything of a spiritual and moral nature?” That to me is as big, if not a bigger question, than the one of material abundance. What faith and morality build is culture and civilization, and the institutions that convey and sustain them.
When doubt of everything is pervasive and corrosive, there are other things that we aren’t able to build or even maintain very well. Like trust among people. Like character that makes you sure you can trust someone. Like community that requires shared norms and experience. Like marriages and families that have a rugged time these days. Like lovely towns and neighborhoods and a sense of order and security.
My nagging concern about both the new liberal agenda of “Abundance” and my bigger concern about the “Make America Great Again” movement is that the answer for both is essentially materialist. Haven’t we been on that track—and yes, with some notable success—for some time? Is more or faster really the answer? I know of no religion that says that human goodness results from great material wealth or an abundance of stuff. How about a scientific study testing the hypothesis that great wealth leads to human goodness or to a good society? Show me the evidence.
What about a society, a culture, of moral and spiritual abundance? What about people, institutions and communities that are abundant in generosity and decency, in trust and grace? That’s my abundance agenda.
