Celebrating 150 years of publishing, The Atlantic Magazine ran a collection of reprints under the banner Markets and Morals, including essays by Peter Drucker (1994), John Maynard Keynes (1932), Henry Demarest Lloyd (1881), Lester C. Thurow (1999) and John Kenneth Galbraith (1967).

Acknowledging wave upon wave of change witnessed by The Atlantic, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz wrote:

Through all these dramatic transformations, written commentary in magazines like The Atlantic has provided context, insight, and occasional pointed criticism, to help ordinary people make sense of the shifting economic climates affecting them.

Yes, isn’t that what we’re all trying to do – make sense of the climate? not merely look out the window to see if its raining?

We think there’s more to it than even that. These Atlantic essayists – every one of them smarter than the average bear – were also activists. They imagined choice and change as reasonable outcomes of thoughtful economic discourse. They advocated not just understanding climate change but working to change the climate. A case in point: In a piece called "Liberty, Happiness… and the Economy" John Kenneth Galbraith observed:

The two questions most asked about an economic system are whether it serves man’s physical needs and whether it is consistent with his liberty and general happiness. There is little doubt as to the ability of the modern industrial system to supply man with goods … The prospect for liberty is far more interesting.

The particular liberty Galbraith seems most concerned with is a measure of autonomy inside the dominant economic system – freedom to grow as a human being, not a human buying. Galbraith warns against the "subordination of belief to the needs of the modern industrial system." This is a remarkable acknowledgment that the economy may need us to forget what we believe; may need us in fact to embrace goals and values in which we do not believe:

The greater danger is in the subordination of belief to the needs of the modern industrial system. As this persuades us on the goods we buy, and as it persuades us on the public policies that are necessary for its planning, so it also accommodates us to its goals and values. These are that technology is always good; that economic growth is always good; that firms must always expand; that consumption of goods is the principal source of happiness; that idleness is wicked; and that nothing should interfere with the priority we accord to technology, growth, and increased consumption.

— John Kenneth Galbraith, "Liberty, Happiness… and the Economy," The Atlantic Magazine, June, 1967

It’s worth noting that Mr. Galbraith, writing from the truncated view available in 1967, could hardly guess just how right he would appear forty years downstream.

technology is always good . . .

nothing should interfere with the priority we accord to technology, growth, and increased consumption.

Today, not many of us would sign off on those values. We know better. We have learned to deconstruct any proposition that includes the word always. And more than a few of us have learned to recognize idolatry when when we see it (nothing should interfere with the priority we accord to technology, growth, and increased consumption).

We know better, but sometimes our behavior has a way of making the things we know functionally irrelevant. "What you do stands behind you shouting all the while so that I cannot hear what you say" is how I remember my high school teacher framing the problem.

. . . I’m no Luddite – I employ and enjoy lots and lots of useful technologies – but I have to say that 40 years downstream from Mr. Galbraith’s warning about liberty, we are all but overrun by useless and deadly technologies. Is this the price we pay for the good stuff or is it the unintended consequence of an economic orthodoxy that insists technology is always good?

. . . I welcome economic growth as much as the next person, but when a rising tide does not in fact raise all boats I have to ask why – if economic growth is always good? Always good for whom?

. . . Getting bigger as a company is so not the same as getting better. Firms must always expand . . . ? Seriously, when it comes to mergers and acquisitions would I be going out on a limb to argue that synergy isn’t synergy if it doesn’t result in measurably better processes and outcomes?

. . . Only the fantastical creatures of advertising suggest with a straight face that the consumption of goods is the principle source of happiness. That said, Business Week (June 5, 2006, page 12) reports findings from an ongoing survey by Keller Fay Group that Americans 13-69 mention specific brands 56 times a week in conversation – suggesting perhaps we are the fantastical creatures of advertising.

. . . There is a sort of idleness that is wicked – I don’t believe this is what Mr. Galbraith had in mind when he said the industrial system insists that idleness is wicked . . . . I think he was referring less to idle hands than idle wallets. The economy doesn’t care what we do as long as we keep buying. What the sacred texts call sabbath, the economy calls idleness. Absent the power to punish monetary sloth, the economy pesters us to get off the sofa and spend our last cent. Wait; what’s that? we don’t have to get off the sofa? Sweet….

. . . Jesus – I feel very confident about this – would not sign off on the contention that nothing should interfere with the priority we accord to technology, growth, and increased consumption . . . After all, it was Jesus who said, "No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." The Pharisees, who Luke claims loved money, sneered when Jesus said this. To which he replied: “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight" [Luke 16:13-15, New International Version].

James Sire writes:

Whether we are looking at our own worldview, that of another person, or that of a whole society, age or culture, our attention will be drawn to the behavioral dimension. A society, a religion or a community may proclaim itself to be peaceful or equally honoring of men and women or slaves and free. A church may say it honors God and seeks first his kingdom. A nation may say it treats all its citizens equally. An individual may claim to believe in a God of shalom – peace with justice. But we will take into account how each behaves.

— Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept, InterVarsity Press, page 135

Frederick Buechner put a finer point on it in The Alphabet of Grace writing: "Thus, when you wake up in the morning, called by God to be a self again, if you want to know who you are, watch your feet. Because where your feet take you, that is who you are" (The Alphabet of Grace, Harper & Row, page 25).

If behavior measures worldview – if where our feet take us tells us who we truly are – and if, refusing to be content with merely understanding economic climate change, we insist on actually changing the economic climate, then our work is set before us.

Such change is not beyond our reach. The history of business – indeed history itself – is emblazoned with the names of individuals and small collectives who altered the climate for everyone; sometimes for mutual advantage, sometimes not. In every instance these people’s behavior ratified their beliefs, standing behind them, shouting all the while so that it hardly mattered what they said.

[Note: If you’d like to explore this further, check out Module Six (especially section six): The Scriptural Roots of Commerce.—jh]