The Holy Trinity

If you have ever attended a Protestant church service, you have heard about the Holy Trinity. I suspect if you aren’t a Protestant, you’ve heard the term elsewhere.

In the Episcopal faith, we mention the Trinity during our services. We close our prayers with, “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.” We cross ourselves as we say it.

God represents the Father, Jesus the son, and the Holy Spirit as our indwelling guide. Believers consider the Trinity sacred and holy. It embodies our whole belief system as a Christian.

Today, I am waxing on about another holy trinity – notice little h and t – I’m referring to the one whose designation goes like this:

Greed the father

Capitalism the son

Consumerism the holy spirit

Once upon a time, Capitalism was for the common man. It began as an economic and political system for trade and industry to allow for profit. It provided private businesses with a fair way of making a living for their families. Anyone with the drive and courage could start a business and make their path in the world. It was a good system and served us all well.

I once tried to read Atlas Shrugged by Russian/American writer and philosopher, Ayn Rand. I got through the first few chapters and put it down. It portrayed great businessmen as heroic, productive thinkers. I will agree, they can be, but my problem was with her cynical view of capitalism. She stressed that capitalism was the only social system that leaves minds free to create and produce the material values on which our lives depend. In other words, our own selfish needs and motivations are all that matters.

When we allow the seed of selfishness to germinate and grow without benefit of proper care, greed becomes the harvest. Welcome the father.

The larger greed grows, the more capitalism is cultivated. Come on! Join the club! Let’s make some money! Let’s plan and meet and figure out how we can make more and more money! Not money to spread around to help everyone, but money we can stockpile for our own selfish purposes. Because after all, we’ve worked hard and deserve this abundance, better yet, we’re entitled to this abundance. Those without just need to work harder! Enter Capitalism, the son.

Capitalism is available for all! Everyone is making money and having a great time but wait a minute. This business offers the same thing we’re offering, and they are making more money! We cannot allow this! We need to figure out a way to draw people over to our product, service, etc. What can we do? Let’s create a bunch of advertising that piques their interest. Yeah! That will work, and if we are a tad bit misleading, no problem! All’s fair in greed and capitalism! Hello Consumerism, our holy spirit.

So, all day long on our cell phones, laptops, desktops, iPads, tablets, and TV’s we see ad after ad. You cannot escape them. Let me sell you something. Mine is better, cheaper, greater, etc. etc.

Sadly, I’m guilty of the same practice – so are you. In a nutshell, I hate it. I do it because my family needs money to survive. We need to pay for the lights, keep a roof over our heads, buy groceries so we do not go hungry. Our country runs off this system and we are held hostage to its rules.

I remember elders talking about the barter system. I need a haircut, and you need some vegetables. Well how about this?! You cut hair and I have a huge garden full of veggies. Sounds like a fair trade. Maybe we should attempt to bring this practice back into play.

While I agree with Rand that Capitalism allows for creativity, it is the hyper-focus that has become an addiction of greed and consumerism. I’m not sure that much can be done for this runaway (lowercase) holy trinity train. Americans are wedded to their stuff and bank accounts. The storage industry has been one of the fastest growing industries over the past ten years. We need more and more room to store our stuff! Perhaps Ayn Rand was on to something or maybe she understood human nature better.

At any rate, I think part of the answer lies with the original Holy Trinity. Is it possible we are trying to fill voids using the lowercase holy trinity. What do you think?