I haven’t read Abundance - it’s on my TBR list, but a ways down under other needed reading. One thought though - you noted that rarely do groups of people want the same things, which is obviously true (except perhaps to Klein and his co-author). But what’s missing in my opinion is a shared definition of a ‘good’ life. It seems to me (a non-professional history nerd) that much of the current friction in our American culture is rooted in a loss of a shared vision of what makes for a ‘good’ life, Just my thoughts on a slow moving Monday morning.
Thanks, Steve—I tend to agree, or at least, without some parameters on what counts as desires which contribute to the flourishing of the common, it’s hard to think about supply-side doing what needs doing.
Myles, thanks for this super-helpful engagement with Klein and Thompson's book, which I hope to read soon! I am completely on board with the direction you are pointing the reader: restrained desire. That said, I'm not sure that I buy "the durability of scarcity as a feature of creation." Biblically, it seems that if we live within the parameters of restrained desire, there are abundant resources within creation (see Gerhard Lohfink, for instance, on the "Feasting" of the 5000). My intuition, as an armchair philosopher, is that any seeming scarcity in creation, can be resolved through some combination of restrained desire and just distribution of resources.
Part of what I’m not pushing back on here, but do have in view, is the kind of work by Lohfink, Cavanaugh, etc—who I love dearly!—but I think that the theological abundance arguments tend to conflate abundance with “enough”. Abundance, as in Klein/Thompson, has to mean more than “enough”, which gets us back into the problem of desire as not bounded.
Right—what I mean here is that just distribution of resources presumes that there’s not as much as anyone would desire. It thus requires restraint precisely because desire doesn’t match supply, or in the old model, demand outstrips supply. Creation is abundant, to be sure, but not endless: there is a limit to the water available, or to the food the earth can supply.
I'm on board with you that there’s not as much as anyone would desire (because desires tend to spin wildly out of control, hence the need for restraint), but for theological reasons, I'm still partial to Lohfink/Cavanugh/Breuggemann/et al in the conviction that God's loving provision for creation is more than merely enough for its life and flourishing. (and so many biblical images seem to bear this out, from the land flowing with milk and honey, to "my cup runneth over," to the feeding/feasting of the 5000 where the crowd had their fill and food was still left over, etc) I balk a little at the description of food and water as limited resources, because both are renewable and part of a flourishing creation is tending these resources in ways that fosters their fecundity and renewal. (A work of cultivation that involves both restrained desire and just distribution.) And having not read the Klein/Thompson book yet, their concept of abundance may differ greatly from the biblical vision of God's abundant provision that I'm working from here?
I haven’t read Abundance - it’s on my TBR list, but a ways down under other needed reading. One thought though - you noted that rarely do groups of people want the same things, which is obviously true (except perhaps to Klein and his co-author). But what’s missing in my opinion is a shared definition of a ‘good’ life. It seems to me (a non-professional history nerd) that much of the current friction in our American culture is rooted in a loss of a shared vision of what makes for a ‘good’ life, Just my thoughts on a slow moving Monday morning.
Thanks, Steve—I tend to agree, or at least, without some parameters on what counts as desires which contribute to the flourishing of the common, it’s hard to think about supply-side doing what needs doing.
Myles, thanks for this super-helpful engagement with Klein and Thompson's book, which I hope to read soon! I am completely on board with the direction you are pointing the reader: restrained desire. That said, I'm not sure that I buy "the durability of scarcity as a feature of creation." Biblically, it seems that if we live within the parameters of restrained desire, there are abundant resources within creation (see Gerhard Lohfink, for instance, on the "Feasting" of the 5000). My intuition, as an armchair philosopher, is that any seeming scarcity in creation, can be resolved through some combination of restrained desire and just distribution of resources.
Part of what I’m not pushing back on here, but do have in view, is the kind of work by Lohfink, Cavanaugh, etc—who I love dearly!—but I think that the theological abundance arguments tend to conflate abundance with “enough”. Abundance, as in Klein/Thompson, has to mean more than “enough”, which gets us back into the problem of desire as not bounded.
Right—what I mean here is that just distribution of resources presumes that there’s not as much as anyone would desire. It thus requires restraint precisely because desire doesn’t match supply, or in the old model, demand outstrips supply. Creation is abundant, to be sure, but not endless: there is a limit to the water available, or to the food the earth can supply.
I'm on board with you that there’s not as much as anyone would desire (because desires tend to spin wildly out of control, hence the need for restraint), but for theological reasons, I'm still partial to Lohfink/Cavanugh/Breuggemann/et al in the conviction that God's loving provision for creation is more than merely enough for its life and flourishing. (and so many biblical images seem to bear this out, from the land flowing with milk and honey, to "my cup runneth over," to the feeding/feasting of the 5000 where the crowd had their fill and food was still left over, etc) I balk a little at the description of food and water as limited resources, because both are renewable and part of a flourishing creation is tending these resources in ways that fosters their fecundity and renewal. (A work of cultivation that involves both restrained desire and just distribution.) And having not read the Klein/Thompson book yet, their concept of abundance may differ greatly from the biblical vision of God's abundant provision that I'm working from here?