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Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
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| Debtor or Creditor: Who is the bad guy | |
|  | Natural Law, Science, and the Social Construction of Reality
Margaret Atwood has produced a very entertaining look at the role of debt in a cultural and historical context.
We learn too much about debt from a purely economic standpoint these days, and economic theory, as we have been seeing, is largely nonsense, so it is nice to see a discussion of the subject from a cultural standpoint.
Atwood shows that the concept of 'debt' is primarily a social or moral concept and has taken on different forms through our history.
In the first chapter she shows that part of Western culture has been about Fairness, and that even primate studies show that our biological relatives have a very real sense of fairness.
But for different cultures or for people in different time periods, fairness could mean different things. Much depended on who owed what to whom. We have money debts and moral debts, and, they both could be seen in a similar light.
Which leads to chapter two which deals with the moral side of debt. Here we meet the Devil, and Dr. Faustus. We sell our souls to the Devil for immediate gratification, only to have to pay the debt later. Atwood likens this to pawning something. The point here is that usually what we have to pay back is more than what we got in the first place. Our souls are worth more than the gratification we got at the time, and what we pay to redeem our article from the pawnbroker is more than what we got for it.
In the third chapter we get an interesting discussion of debt as seen in literature, from Marlowe to Dickens. here we see the negative aspect of the creditor's role in debt. if the creditor did not lend money, there would be no debt. if the creditor did not charge such high interest, debt would not be such a burden, and if the Scrooges of the world payed their employees what they were worth, there would not be such a need to borrow.
And in chapter four we see the seedier side of debt.
The final chapter is called "payback" and tries to sum things up.
What makes this book so good is that it treats this topic with wit and humor, and by using various literary sources, we see that the notion of debt and payback, whether it is sacrificing an animal to a deity, or paying high interest on a loan, the role of the debtor and creditor are symbiotic: You can't have one without the other.
And, while people go into debt for various reasons, the main reason seems to be that we all want what we see as everyone else as having, even if we can't afford it.
But just think if there was no one to lend. What would happen then?
The only negative aspect of the boo, for me, is that I was hoping for a discussion of what is going on in economy today as an example of what had been discussed up to this point. I realize that I am criticizing a book for not doing something it was not supposed to do, but it would have been nice to see a discussion of how our current financial system has become based on debt and not on positive production.
But all in all, an interesting read.
| | | Given the current worldwide economic situation, it appears rather prescient that the 2008 Massey Lectures are on the subject of debt. In these lectures, Margaret Atwood provides an examination of the concept of debt as a motif in human society, particularly through an examination of the metaphors of debt in western literature. As such, this book only obliquely deals with monetary debts. Rather, the focus is on the more general idea of debt in relation to justice, sin, redemption, balance, and revenge, among other topics.
Atwood begins with the notion of debt and its relationship to fairness, which is ingrained in the psyche of the human race (and other intelligent creatures). In early societies, she describes how notions of debt are aligned with justice, typically represented by a supernatural female figure. It is the emergence of Greece, and the induction of the court system described in Aeschylus' Oresteia, that the idea of a female arbiter of fairness/justice (and thus of debt) is replaced.
Next, Atwood describes the links between debt and sin. In heaven, debts are forgiven; in hell, debts are eternally paid back. The character of Satan is described as a collector of debts, and is often shown with a ledger or balance sheets. With these notions of debt and sin, the creditor is often seen to be as sinful as the debtor, particularly in pre-industrial literature. Moreover, motifs of debt are always twinned with motifs of credit, one symbiotic with the other.
In the lecture on "Debt as plot", Atwood examines the characters of Faust (as exemplified by Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, in particular) and Scrooge (of Dickens's Christmas Carol). In a fascinating section, she asks if Dickens wrote Scrooge as a reverse characterization of Faust:
"Was Dickens consciously writing Scrooge as a reverse Faustus? ... There are so many correspondences it is hard to avoid the thought: Faustus longs to fly through the air and visit distant times and places, Scrooge dreads it, both do it. Both have clerks - Wagner and Bob Cratchit - the one treated well by Faustus, the other treated badly by Scrooge. Marley is Scrooge's Mephistopheles figure who carries his own Hell around with him... Everything Faustus does, Scrooge does backwards."
As someone who has been studying variations of the Faust legend for over a decade, I found this digression fascinating. Indeed, the characters of Scrooge and Faust loom large over all of the lectures.
An examination of the shadow side of debt described in the title focuses on the ideas of punishment, resentment, and revenge, among others. The endless cycles of revenge and counter-revenge exemplified in the myth of the house of Atreus is shown as analogous to cycles of debt and credit: one is a moral debt, the other a financial one. The solutions to both are laws (as exemplified in the Oresteia) or forgiveness (as exemplified by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission). Forgiveness can break non-ending cycles of moral debt and financial debt. The shadow side of the debtor is the creditor: hence we have Faust/Mephistopheles, Scrooge/Cratchit, and Antonio/Shylock. It was inevitable that a treatment of the motif of debt would include an analysis of The Merchant of Venice, and Atwood succeeds
Payback is associated with redemption, and requires recognition on the debtor's part of the debt incurred. In the concluding lecture, Atwood returns to Scrooge. Recognizing two archetypes in the Dickens tale (Scrooge Original, before his redemption, and Scrooge Lite, after his redemption), she introduces a third archetype: Scrooge Nouveaux. This twenty-first century Scrooge is an annoyingly narcissistic modern businessperson, both astoundingly rich and astoundingly ignorant. This Scrooge is visited not by the spirits of Christmas past, present, and future, but the spirits of Earth Day past, present, and future. At this point, the narrative moves into a strong focus ecological ethics and the role of debt. The debtor, Scrooge Nouveaux, is a stand-in for all of us and our negligent razing of the planet, racking up an enormous amount of ecological debt from our creditor. We can either start to pay back through sustainable and ethical practices and receive the forgiveness of Gaia, or proceed with business as usual and face her revenge. As Scrooge Nouveaux begins the new day after the nocturnal visit of the three spirits, he thinks:
"I don't really own anything... Not even my body. Everything I have is only borrowed. I'm not really rich at all, I'm heavily in debt. How do I even begin to pay back what I owe? Where should I start?"
Scrooge's thoughts apply to all of us. Where shall we begin?
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If Margaret Atwood had written Payback in order to pay off a debt like Charles Dickens is said to have been motivated to write A Christmas Carol, perhaps it would have turned out be a better book.
Perhaps if shed had another year to write it: originally her Massey lecture was scheduled for 2009 but was brought forward when a conflict emerged with the publication date of her next novel.
As it turned out, Payback: Debt and The Shadow Side Wealth, is somewhat like a character in a novel itself; caught up in circumstance, a hero determined to change the course of events yet doomed to fail by a tragic flaw.
A tragic flaw may or may not be known to the protagonist and in this case, Atwood is acutely aware of it. Still, she plods on as she tragically must, determined to fashion an answer to what was, a year or two ago when she started crafting her arguments, no more than a glimmer of pending economic crisis.
Atwood chooses Dickens Scrooge for the model of her redemption story, contriving Scrooge Nouveau, a worldly, corporate, media savvy version of Dickens original, and a capitalist with a keener eye for self-interest than the old miser ever had.
But like Dickens Scrooge, Atwoods Nouveau version finds redemption to be a relatively free ride; it comes at no real cost to himself; he is more than able to share his enormous wealth. Like Dickens, Atwood advocates personal, internal, even spiritual change. Adopting an attitude of service to others, or the earth as Atwood suggests, serves everyone better, including oneself. Its a slight of hand accomplished by looking at everything one has, even ones body, as borrowed.
Atwoods Scrooge parable is the fifth and final chapter of Payback, and surprising because there is no payback, no belt-tightening, no hard choices, no revenge and no sacrifice, even after the four previous meticulously researched chapters show how the debt story or narrative always involves a payback, a literal paying back of what has been borrowed, or a symbolic and often vengeful payback, extracting a price for a moral wrong, often from the usurious creditor. In either case, the story of debt always involves loss: of homes, relationships, jobs, even lives.
History shows no compassion in balancing the scales.
So it seems odd that the sardonic, intellectual Atwood would fashion a happy ending in which no one gets hurt. Like Dickens, Atwoods outcome lacks the tragedy of real payback. Unlike Dickens, it lacks the fireside warmth of reconciliation. The result is unconvincing. Though like Dickens, Atwoods somewhat Disney-like ending is likely to serve. Literary critics have puzzled over Dickens enormous popularity and commercial success despite being an outspoken political critic. Perhaps it was because he could only imagine individual solutions to problems that he also saw as arising out of individual failings. The individual is after all, no matter his or her political stripe, the basic building block of capital.
Payback achieves Atwoods ambitious goal, to examine debt as a human construct that peculiar nexus where money, narrative or story, and religious belief intersect She shows convincingly how debt is a story we tell ourselves over and over again, the story of how we are all dependent on one another, connected by exchange, one person owes another person, or God, or the Earth. The actors, debtor and creditor, and the price extracted, change over time, each version telling us heaps about the people who wrote the story with how they lived.
Yet, what Payback fails to do is paint a picture of human folly and redemption in terms adequate to the scale and scope to the social and systemic crisis we are facing. The Dickensian world has been superseded by a global one of mass media and public and private institutions so large as to be unimaginable in his time. Of course, it is too much to ask of any artist, even if they are more observant, sensitive, tuned in than most folks. Artists may indeed be prescient but cannot be expected to be oracles. And in fairness, Atwood drops hints here and there about interesting outside the box type solutions like debt cancellation, which at this point we must imagine leaders and bankers around the world to have put in play billions and trillions of dollars in order to effect.
In his Salon review of Payback, Louis Bayard pretty much nails the problems mentioned here, in particular the cheesy Scrooge Nouveau ending. Perhaps the book was brought out too soon, driven by circumstance, or even the avarice of a publisher quite possibly giddy with their good fortune to have in hand something like a first person account from the cliff edge of the lemmings charging over. At publication date, the full extent of the economic crash still wasnt clear (its still not) and Atwoods lecture would have been conceived and written months before when everyone still thought the environment was the No. 1 issue facing humankind. Its a bit like Stephan Dions Green Shift in the recent Canadian election; a program years in the making, diligently crafted, intelligent, yet effortlessly blindsided by the economy and a Conservative be happy, dont worry sort of non-engagement.
Payback is a story that needs a new ending. Better still, a new ending written every few years (or months at the current pace of change). If debt will always be with us, what becomes critical is who writes its story, particularly the ending.
Notes, references and other stuff:
This review was first posted at http://www.readingart.ca
The most delightful insight of Payback is Atwoods itemization of the possible responses to debt catastrophe: Protect Yourself, Give Up and Party, Help Others, Blame, Bear Witness and Go About Your Life. While one might ask whether these are as well-documented as Kulbler-Rosss stages of mourning, intuitively they feel right, giving pause to reflect on just where you are at personally, how are you reacting, coping.
One hates to quibble but in such a prestigious volume as a Massey Lecture, but it would have been nice if someone at Anansi had proofread the book using more than spell check. And the index overlooks at least one page with the Dickens name on it.
Louis Bayards Salon review:
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/10/28/payback/
The original Scrooge tale is now in the public domain, from which it continues to produce income for somebody:
http://www.alexlib.com/A_Christmas_Carol/A_Chritsmas_Carol.htm
and
http://www.lulu.com/content/339474
On the tragic hero, generally:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragic_hero
On the Massey Lectures timing switcheroo:
http://www.macleans.ca/canada/national/article.jsp?content=20081001_11026_11026&page=1
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