Radical Abundance | Trinity Wall Street
"What Is the True Measure of Abundance?" asks a recent conference at Trinity Church in New York City. Speakers include Majora Carter, David Korten, Timothy Gorringe, Néstor Míguez, and Miriam MacGillis.
Here is an excerpt from an interview with Timothy Gorringe, professor of theology at University of Exeter, in England.
If you look at the world in 1700, you've got a world population of maximum 500 million; life expectancy is quite low everywhere and in every class. Then, in the course of the 19th century, with better diet, better housing, and better sanitation the population starts to climb. All over the world human beings find themselves suddenly living better than they ever had before. This becomes reality for two-thirds of the world afterWorldWar II. It seems that we've entered paradise: there's the world and it holds all kinds of things that your great-grandparents could never have dreamed of —and they're cheap.
It's what humans have always wanted and it's incredibly seductive. It's shaped our spirituality, a spirituality where life is good and easy, where we rule the world and we can do what we want. It is completely false. That whole world is built on cheap energy—it was built on cheap coal first and then on cheap oil. ...
The question is, what is there which is actually more satisfying than consumerism and this leisure culture? Ultimately these things don't answer the human quest for meaning. All the great ethical traditions of the world talk about the need for limits. Finding appropriate limits and working within those limits has always been at the heart of human flourishing, in so far as human flourishing is about depth, not superficiality.
