Exploring a Lost American Ethic

Sorcha Brophy-Warren (Academy Class of 2006)

Sorcha Brophy-Warren

A 2006 graduate of the Trinity Forum Academy, Sorcha is currently a sociology PhD student at Yale University. She lives in New Haven, CT and Brooklyn, New York.

“It was easier not to look at them,” a guest meekly explained about her four-year collection of unopened (and unpaid) bills on a 2006 Oprah mini-series. The five-part series, “The Debt Diet” follows the lives of three families struggling with overwhelming amounts of personal debt. Each family is paired with one of three “Debt Diet Experts” – these financial planners are charged with helping them ‘trim the fat’ off their spending, get out of debt, and turn their lives around.

This particular guest’s neglected debt – about $170,000 – is higher than that of most Americans, but the coping mechanism she employs is one with which many of us are familiar. Feeling paralyzed, she ignores her problems, consciously endangering her own financial well being. Though her behavior contradicts the wisdom of rational choice economics, much of the research I have been involved in over the past two years suggests that her reactions are representative of the way that a good number of us interact with money.  We know the thing we ought to do. But we don’t.

The last year of economic upheaval in the US has proved unfortunately fortunate timing for researchers working on the topic of personal debt. Frightened by the subprime mortgage debacle, rising fuel prices, and usurious lending practices in the headlines, everyone is ready for some insight into the crisis of overindebtedness. Since the summer of 2006 I have been working on a research initiative at the Institute for American Values in NYC dubbed “The Thrift Project.” Thrift, what is commonly understood as the practicing of economy in the management of resources, was once a vibrant part of the language of American civic responsibility, but over the last century, use of the word has gradually faded away. The function of the Thrift Project is to reintroduce the term as a valid framework for understanding our ethical relationship with the material world.

When asked to define ‘thrift’ we describe it as an ethic of wise use. Counter to wise use, the fact that Americans have come to view debt as an intrinsic part of life is significant not only for our finances, but for the way that we relate to all material resources. We have become accustomed to thinking that the future will clear up our present problems; as a result there is no limit on the amount we expend. We prioritize disposability, instant gratification, and convenience over sustainable living, and rely on future technology to compensate for our wastefulness.

The exact ideology of thrift is difficult to define, yet not without value. As with any cultural value, our understanding of it is embedded in historical use. At different points in our nation’s history, thrift has been heralded as a progressive vision for combating poverty and empowering people from different socio-economic backgrounds. On the other hand, it has served as a means of inaccurately insisting on inherent character differences between the poor and the wealthy. More importantly, the historical thrift ethic lacks teleological significance. To whom and for what reason we should be thrifty is not necessarily contained within the ideology. Historically, thrift advocates have more frequently located the value of thrift in the potential to generate additional wealth than in the intrinsic virtue of being wise stewards of the material world.

In using the term ‘thrift’ our research group does not encourage Americans to hearken back to a golden age during which our nation truly valued its material resources. Rather, we call attention to the fact that there was once a language for and tendency toward conscious thinking about our relationship with material resources—and it is lamentable that this language has faded away. Our goal is to encourage Americans to once again be conscious of the significance of our relationship with debt and waste, savings and conservation.

The appeal of this project, for me, comes from my tendency to use my research to self-medicate. About a year ago, in the hopes of identifying some interviewees for a writing project, I participated in an adult financial education course for welfare recipients on monthly stipends. As the women in the course described the ways their lives had been changed by the basic budgeting skills they were learning, I was struck by the apparent disconnect between the financial values they articulated and some very noticeable ways they were wasting money on small daily purchases. After the course, I was embarrassed by my failure to identify their financial decision making as similar to my own. Although I write and think about the ethics of relating to stuff every day, I cannot stop defining myself by the things I consume, and, disturbingly, rarely make decisions about consumption based on a desire to relate rightly to the physical world. Much more of my economic behavior is explained by the Apostle Paul’s lamentation about the control of the sinful nature in Romans 7 (“For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…”) than in an Intro to Economics textbook. I struggle to connect my pangs of having too much stuff, efforts to recycle, and to buy green with the overwhelming (and frequently succumbed to) desire to buy my lunch instead of make it, purchase shoes on eBay, and go on vacation rather than pay down my credit card. And, for the most part, no one calls me out on these choices, as our relationship with our stuff remains a topic we as a culture deem private. As a result, all of these decisions feel disconnected from one another, rather than part of an ordered ideology of how to interact with the material world.

It is this uneasiness that draws me to a word by which Americans have historically identified their posture toward material resources. Thrift is a tradition with a complex, blemished history, but with the resources to acknowledge that our relationship with the material world is significant. If we are to commit ourselves to the task of making goodness and grace apparent in the world, we cannot fail to examine our relationship with its substance, and, if we are to do this with any effectiveness, we must, as a community, identify this as a priority. For now, an imperfect word may at least be a tool to start.

1 Responses • Alumni, Fellows, Mon 15 Sep 2008