By M a rilyn C h a ndler M c E ntyre
other deadly weapon. She was also, however, a white suburban woman raising children in the 1950s, a woman who watched Ed Sullivan and Ronald Reagan’s slick GE commercials and who bought Girl Scout cookies and Jello and made Rice Krispies treats. Returning to this country, she found herself riding the crest of a postwar wave of mass production made possible by abundant gasoline and unexamined miracle chemicals like DDT and accompanied by the final strains of the American anthem of manifest destiny echoing over the beat of Khrushchev’s shoe at the UN. We were world leaders, and our “rightful” domination was reflected not only in our weapons but also in our waste. Planned obsolescence, disposable packaging, and the emerging fast food industry collaborated in an ethic of convenience whose costs were masked by a language of blessing, abundance, and American privilege it has taken years to recognize as the worst kind of propaganda campaign — and possibly the most successful in history.
“Father, we thank thee for these and all thy blessings.” Thus began the many meals my father prayed over. His thankfulness, and my mother’s, were informed by years spent in India, working among the rural poor, caring for orphans in a mission school, traveling among villages where adequate food was never to be taken for granted. In the course of my childhood, their frequent reminders to be thankful even for steamed greens and boiled potatoes designed to stretch a sparse budget were never abstractions. Waste was an insult both to the memory of people they had known who valued the last grain of rice in the pot and to God’s good providence. I am grateful for their training in habits of gratitude and awareness. It helped my brother and me cultivate a bit of “global consciousness” before it became a buzz word. What appeared on our table was always, emphatically, to be appreciated in two ways: as a gift of God’s abundance and as a blessing that imparted responsibility to us as “rich Christians in an age of hunger.” Another version of grace before meals asked that the Lord “bless this food to our use and us to thy purpose,” clearly and simply connecting the dots between the ultimate source of nourishment and its ultimate aim, which went well beyond individual satisfaction to include the good of the whole world. A meal framed in that way could and did acquire a sacramental character. Sundays there was lamb or pot roast, or, in leaner months, stew. Grandma’s china and special Fostoria glasses were put on the dining table where a freshly ironed cloth had been spread. Every week this feast day restored a healthy balance between frugality and celebration and reasserted gratitude over a vague and fruitless guilt that was often a downside of our family’s earnest Calvinism.
A Prophetic Warning
Eisenhower’s oft-cited warning to that generation about the dangers of the “military-industrial complex” has acquired over time the force of prophecy.1 We are witnessing the fruits of that dangerous collaboration between the military and industry: Not only our regular armed forces, but also increasing ranks of industry-supported “security forces,” protect by violence our privilege, including our overeating (we are now the fattest, as well as the wealthiest, nation). Monsanto has cut deals with the Indian government to prevent rural farmers from collecting their own seeds.2 Their patents on various forms of plant life give them “rights,” aggressively enforced, to shares in crops even inadvertently pollinated by “their” microorganisms. Coca-Cola has effectively sterilized farmlands in the vicinity of its factories in India by heedless chemical waste dumping that would be prohibited in the US. Its labor abuses in Columbia are legendary.3 MacDonald’s has been singly responsible for the destruction of millions of acres of rainforest in the interests of raising beef for North American consumers on cheaply purchased farmland. The farmers displaced in that process often end up in urban poverty.4 The list goes on: Wal-Mart’s low prices exact a high toll in human rights abuses;5 Tyson Foods raises animals in cruel and squalid captivity entirely out of keeping with any notion of good stewardship;6 Nestle and Kraft products pose specific dangers to public health, despite World Health Organization oversight and urgent recommendations.7 Exxon’s record of human rights violations is persuasive, even to reluctant critics, but the company remains a key player in the global food systems that have become unprecedentedly oil-dependent.8 All these corporations have come to depend on unsustainable
What ‘Enough’ Looks Like
I know my mother struggled with culture shock, returning to America in the postwar 1950s to find frozen foods, quick mixes, and a bewildering array of mass-marketed cereals in boxes that bore plastic “prizes” for small apprentice shoppers. I know she struggled with the excessive expectations purveyed on the few TV shows we were allowed and from a peer culture already steeped in suburban notions of plenty. She saved packaging until it became silly to make one more stack of margarine tubs. She meted out candy money only on special occasions. All leftovers reappeared in new guises. She made sure we knew what “enough” looked like—and the difference between “want” and “need.” And she did all this with a generosity of spirit that was fueled and sustained by an utterly practical understanding of spiritual economics: Poverty is not a virtue, but it makes us recognize our dependence; and wealth need not be a vice, but it is a dangerous instrument of good to be used with the same care one might exercise with any
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