Today is Day Three of Week One of
the Omer. That is Day Three of the
Omer. The theme of the Week is Slavery.
For the past two days, I’ve been
talking about the forms of slavery that exist in our world today: in other places in the world, and even right
under our noses. Whether or not we can
actually see the people in bondage, we need to know that they’re
there. And we need to know that the
choices we sometimes make – out of ignorance – can and do feed these forms of
slavery. It is said that ignorance is
bliss, but if so now I’ve spoilt it for you!
Really, we should think more deeply whenever we spend our money. Because people in Western countries such as
Australia spend so much compared to people in so many other parts of the world,
our personal spending has a big impact.
It may seem like a small gesture to refuse to buy products from certain
sources, but it matters.
Yesterday I cited the Rav as
identifying two types of slavery. The
first is ‘juridic,’ which includes the exploitation of workers in places like
the Muslim world and China. The slavery
that results from the twin plagues of prostitution and drugs, whilst not
connected to political or ideological causes, is similar. The second kind of slavery that the Rav
identified is that which he called, ‘typological.’ This is understood as the slavery that is
largely self-imposed by our outright willingness to be enslaved, or else
by the bad choices we make – or which others have made for us – and their
consequences.
Once, when I was much younger and in
the US Navy, I bought a VW camper van. This
was not way back when such were the vehicles of choice of ‘hippies’ and other
counterculture types. I’m not that old! This was in the 1980’s, by which time the
Westphalia conversions of the VW ‘Vanagon’ were a premium item. It was something of an impulse purchase; we had
talked briefly about looking into buying one, but had not researched it before
we swung by the dealership to look them over.
Long story short, we found ourselves bowled over by the demonstration of
its capabilities and drove home in a new Vanagon camper. I won’t say how much it cost because it was
less than people typically pay for a new car today, but when I contacted my credit
union to obtain financing, they told me they could not possibly finance that
amount given my salary and my housing costs at the time. So we returned the van to the dealer,
explaining that we hadn’t gotten the financing.
But that ‘wasn’t a problem,’ because the dealer had already gotten
financing approved through a loan company he used.
Of course my credit union had made
the right call; the monthly payment on the Vanagon was burdensome for
us. And then there was the matter of assignments. I was, at the time, in Russian language
school. A few months after we purchased
the van, I had to negotiate my next assignment after the school. The assignments guy wanted to send me to a
base in Japan; he said that given my rank and tenure in the service, that would
be the best assignment for me from what he had available. But I had to ask for something else, because
personnel going to Japan could not ship personal vehicles due to stricter smog
standards there. I couldn’t sell the
Vanagon without taking a big loss, and I couldn’t afford to live in Japan if I was
making the monthly payments on the van.
After consultations, I decided to request an assignment to Turkey for
one year with family separation because of the financial bind we had put
ourselves in. Now the tour in Turkey
turned out to be an okay career move, but you can see my point; I had put
myself into a form of slavery to the shiny object I had desired and bought on
impulse without due consideration as to the consequences.
This was, comparatively speaking, a
mild example of slavery to ‘stuff’; I know of people who have enslaved
themselves to possessions to a much greater degree. As an example, I know someone who bought a
unit in the Washington, DC area in 2006 just when the real estate market there
was incredibly overheated. They bought
the unit because housing prices were almost in a situation of hyper-inflation. Not wanting to get left behind, this person
bought with the smallest down payment they could get away with. You can guess the rest of the story; the next
year the bottom fell out of US housing due to the collapse of the sub-prime
mortgage market – which had been one of the primary drivers of that
inflationary spiral. For years, this
person has been making payments on a unit with negative equity. And being employed, they are far better off
than others who lost their jobs in the economic downturn that followed the
housing bust. Millions and millions – in
the US and elsewhere in the world – have dug themselves financial holes because
they bought more house than they could afford.
Buying on credit is a tender trap. In a healthy economy, it keeps people
employed because consumers can make purchases they would be able to
otherwise. But it is a severe pitfall
for those who buy just because the finance department says ‘yes,’ but their
personal financial condition cautions against it. As a result, there is a pandemic of people
whose debt level is dangerously high. In
Colorado, I was a director of a non-profit that offered help to families who
were temporarily homeless because of loss of jobs, that sort of thing. Almost without exception, they lost their
homes because, instead of building themselves a cushion of savings when the
money was coming in steadily, they spent and ran up debt. So even a short-term loss of income, say for the
couple of months it might take to find alternative work and get the paychecks
coming in again, would find them out on the streets.
Becoming homeless because of one’s
spending on stuff, and losing a job on top of that, is a worst-case
scenario. Many who never lose the roof
over their heads still find their lives essentially ruled by the reality of
crushing debt that remains long after the shiny objects of their lust have lost
their lustre. Few people plan to
take on excessive debt. But they are
fooled into doing so by the mindset of ‘gotta have it now.’ And interestingly, this is a form of slavery
that affects people across the socioeconomic spectrum. I know of people who have been well-to-do,
even exceptionally wealthy, who have ruined themselves financially because of
their lust for prestigious homes, fine automobiles, yachts…sometimes all three,
because lust for shiny, expensive objects often transcends one or two
categories of such goods.
My unconsidered purchase of that
shiny VW Westphalia Camper affected my finances for only a few years. The payments eventually finished. I was never in danger of bankruptcy because
of it. A lot of people dig themselves
financial holes which take them far more years to get out of, if they ever
do. But for me, it was still an
expensive, and important lesson that I have heeded since then. And here’s the rub; because the van was such
a financial drain, we never really enjoyed it!
Every trip seemed forced, like another rebuke for buying an object we
simply couldn’t afford.
Slavery to stuff is real slavery
in that it takes away our choices and can radically change the course of our
lives. When we think about the ways that
slavery still besets us, we cannot ignore this form.
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