I’m working on how to close out Creative Infrastructures: Artists, Money, and Entrepreneurial Action. My thinking has evolved, somewhat circuitously, since I began studying entrepreneurship and then public administration fifteen years ago. The writing has really been about me untying the Gordian knot I became trapped within as I grew increasingly aware of the conflicts between my values and my actions (or rather the actions I was teaching others to pursue). Here is what I am working on for a closing…let me know what you think:
Capitalism is not just an economic system, it is a culture, grounded in the belief that the pursuit of individual self interest is in the interest of the good of all humanity. As wealth inequity grows and the planet warms at an unsustainable pace, many are accepting that a culture shift is needed. It will take at least another generation for that culture shift to take hold more permanently. Such a shift may lead, at the macro level, to the return of social democracy as a way to the shift the balance between the individual and collective well-being. Yet, we need to also look past (or perhaps below) the macro level to the community level, each community networked in ways that enable them to spiral up to a more sustainable future for artists and everybody else. Such a “responsive communitarian” approach does not yet have much traction politically, but may provide the framework needed for a future economy that empowers artists (and other people) to not merely survive, but to thrive.
I am not a particularly observant religious Jew, but my Jewish identity is still very important to me. Chanukah is a festival holiday, one that commemorates an historical event, rather than deeply spiritual holy day like Yom Kippur or the Sabbath. When I was a teenager, my pacifist self was disturbed by the hanukiah my mother dug off a bottom shelf each year. It depicted a line of heavily armed Maccabees entering the gate of Jerusalem to save the Jews from oppression. I’m not an expert on either the history or the religion, but it is unlikely that a group of religious zealots who had been camping out in the wilderness would look this put together. Like so much of religion, this view of Judah and the Maccabees is the stuff of myth. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t something important in the Chanukah celebration, which seems more relevant now than ever before in my life.
So…I light my candles, using not my mother’s militaristic hanukiah, but this more neutral one that I bought when I was in Israel forty years ago. I light the candles to remind myself and my family that only if we work together can we resist the oppression of all people and repair the world.
