As retail sales comprise an overwhelming fraction of GDP, Wall Street's fragility is ultimately the product of a society based on hyper-consumption. Our recurring market problems are largely the result of Main Street's insistent craving for goods. And this craving is itself is rooted in something much deeper.
We are what we buy. There is nothing controversial about this assertion. Nor is it a uniquely American condition. The problem is that in any society wherein one's perceived value is determined by observable consumption, the resultant economy is built upon sand.
This is not what we hear from the experts. It is not their task to go beyond hard economics to soft psychology. But if we should look more closely, it will become clear that we may have as much to learn about market crises from Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung as we do from Adam Smith and Karl Marx.
Until we can get a handle on the underlying public need for more and more things, for tangible goods that can seemingly validate us as individuals, these crises will not go away. Even if we could actually fix current market problems by expanding consumption, what sort of society would we encourage?
What kind of an economy and society must rely on engineered purchasing for its buoyancy? Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke of "self reliance." He understood that a foolish "reliance upon property" was the result of "a want of self reliance." Today, living amid a humiliating barrage of advertising jingles, delirious collectivism and ceaseless imitation, the apprehensive American sorely wants to project a "correct" image. In turn, this pale reflection of self-worth must be founded upon appearance and a cornucopia of all the right things.
The demeaning consumer message of our American mass society is everywhere, even in universities. Here, for the most part - Princeton is still an obvious exception - mimicry and repetition define "excellence." Today, almost all higher education is plainly vocational. We generally graduate newly minted Ph.D.s, MDs, JDs and MBAs who know almost nothing but how to progress in their own fields. They may turn out to be perfectly good teachers, doctors, lawyers and accountants, but they shall always remain trained, not educated.
Do we want a genuinely robust economy and a stable stock market? Then we must first reorient our society from its corrupted ambience of mass taste to a more cultivated environment of thought and feeling. There is great beauty in the world, but it is best not to search for it at the bank, the video store or the shopping mall.
Even in that very large part of Main Street that knows little of Wall Street, there is now deepening anxiety and tangible unhappiness. Taught that respect and success lie in high salaries and corollary patterns of consumption, the American mass dutifully worships the commonplace. Why should it be otherwise? Galvanized by mostly patronizing and vulgar entertainments, this lonely American crowd follows a flamboyant but impotent ringmaster.
The ringmaster and the surrounding circus of public life are most conspicuous in politics. Soon, we will turn to another presidential election. Yet, this reassuringly hopeful ritual will have no substantial effect upon what we have already become as a people, or even upon the basic durability of our financial markets.
Wall Street remains dependent on mass society. Such a mutually destructive dependence can never succeed. We must create conditions whereby each of us can feel important and alive without surrendering to manufactured images of power and status. Without such conditions, millions of Americans will continue to seek comfort in mind-numbing music, mountains of drugs and oceans of alcohol.
Despite all the noise, bravado and contrived cheerfulness, we are now a largely unhappy society that finds little or no authentic meaning within ourselves. This distinctly human problem of a socially crushed individualism must quickly become the starting point for fixing what is fundamentally wrong with our financial markets. It follows that before Princeton students go off to work on Wall Street, they should first strive to identify and understand this locus of transformation.
Lous Rene Beres GS '71 is a professor of international law at Purdue University. He can be reached at lberes@purdue.edu.
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