I’ve been thinking a lot about why people hold different positions on issues.  

Everyone has a view of something, some better than others, but certainly most of us don’t have the full picture needed. Meaning we all view things, even if correctly, from a limited perspective.

I’ve been considering my own limitations too. I’ll start with a viewpoint contrary to my own.

Many feel very disconnected in their lives. They don’t feel like they’re part of a community. They feel like life is a huge treadmill of trying to get stuff, and all for what? This may even translate into their thinking that something as broad as ‘capitalism’ is only “everyone striving for that which is not worth having”, to quote from Vanity Fair.  

I don’t really get why people are so down on capitalism per se.  

But of course a huge part of my life is my Christianity. This means I find my meaning in something much more than just trying to get stuff. I work, and am happy and satisfied. I’ve found contentment and joy in my work, but a big part of that is getting an understanding of what makes me happy and searching after that, rather than trying to just make more money.

Even in the realm of ‘stuff’, there are things that are important to me- having good food, for example, and giving charitably to various people, and some travel to broaden my understanding; and there are things that are not- like having a bigger house, lots of toys, the best car I can afford etc.

With my job, I’m happy and content with what I have. I like it and it provides me with enough. So I’m not worried about trying to make more.

A large part of my Christianity has been involvement in a local church community. So I’m far from isolated. We have friends, and acquaintances and even people we only know slightly, that are all part of regularly group of like-minded people. I’ve gotten involved in their lives over the years and found connection.

But I’m considering that for so many people, faith in God has been removed from their lives, and along with that, the contentment and community that comes with it… the very human connections that make life so worth living and so different from a rat race.

Now, in a very unpopular opinion these days, I’m convinced people aren’t stupid. Sure, I know they do stupid things on occasion because I’ve done plenty of stupid things, but in general, they aren’t stupid. My take on it is that they (well… we) just have a limited view of life. It’s kind of like the blind men who are led to an elephant and when they lay their hands on it, they describe what they feel. One might touch the end of the trunk, one might touch a tusk, one might touch the belly, another the ear. They’ll each end up with a different experience, and when they relate what they felt, it’ll be different. Each one is correct, but each has only a limited sense of what they were touching.

So it is with life. I have tended to dismiss the anti-capitalist viewpoint because I haven’t found it to be what others see it to be. If I recall correctly from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, he understood the need for a Christian underpinning to the society in which capitalism would operate. He knew that you couldn’t just unleash greed. But this brings up another point: the system- capitalism- isn’t responsible for unleashing greed into the world. Nor will greed cease to be a factor in human interactions if capitalism were to be abolished.  

It’s true that capitalism uses the idea of human greed, or better, self-interest, as a central part of its animating force. An entrepreneur’s self-interest will lead him to find better solutions and please his customers so that they’ll continue to buy from him. This competition works to foster innovation and keep prices low in an effort to win consumers.  

A common modern summary (ignorant, but still prevalent) of the difference between capitalism and socialism is that capitalism is everyone caring only about themselves and socialism is people helping each other.

But removing the profit motive doesn’t remove self-interest. Self-interest just shows up in different ways.

However, at root, the sense of hopelessness and of being caught as a cog in a machine is real in people’s lives. What they know is that the machine’s system we happen to live in is known as capitalism, and that they’re unfulfilled. So with a little coaxing, they can be brought to the conclusion that the problem is the system- capitalism. The symptoms are correct, the diagnosis is lacking, in my opinion. The problem is that the meaning has been stripped of life, when God was removed.  

It’s perhaps why so many socialists tend to have such an almost religious fervor about their belief in socialism. But socialism isn’t new to this world. It’s been done, and it’s been done in almost every flavor and level imaginable. It didn’t alleviate alienation and hopelessness. It actually increased them.

But I keep coming back to this notion that people aren’t wrong about what they’re feeling. They know they’re deeply unhappy, and they have intuited that life is meaningless as a race to accrue stuff. It’s just that the answer isn’t a different political system. The answer is Jesus. Jesus left heaven, came to earth and died on a cross… to pay for your sins. But more than that, he was raised to life again so that you can be raised to new life too. Now he lives and wants to give new life to all who would call on his name.