Trade is all very well in its way, but Trade has been put in the place of Truth. Trade, which is in its nature a secondary or dependent thing, has been treated as a primary and independent thing; as an absolute. The moderns, mad upon mere multiplication, have even made a plural out of what is eternally singular, in the sense of single. They have taken what all ancient philosophers called the Good, and translated it as the Goods…
When God looked on created things and saw that they were good, it meant that they were good in themselves and as they stood; but by the modern mercantile idea, God would only have looked at them and seen that they were The Goods.
-G.K. Chesterton, The Well and the Shallows
As I am transitioning from pharmacy life into the field of education, I see this more and more. We really are at a point at which we think education is simply about learning a trade in order to ‘contribute’ to society. We are more concerned about the goods than the good.
It is an absolute must in this environment that the church, and individual Christians, strive to be different. We must not look at creation and culture and simply see ‘goods.’
This is one of the reasons why I focus on technology to the extent that I do. Technology can kill the existential. I am not saying that it always does. I am saying that it is capable of doing so. It can rob the beauty of ‘being.’ It can turn a beautiful sunrise into a mere photo op. It can turn friends into icons on a screen. It can turn wonderful things into internet equity – that is, into goods.
It’s not just technology though. We can turn anything into goods. Spouses, kids, art, whatever. As we brush back against this, the idea is to see the innate good of things without seeing them as things to use as a means of gaining equity. Enjoy the world and life without putting it on our socially constructed eBays.
Anyway, it’s a great quote from Chesterton.