The question arises whether I have attributed to commerce some of my own personal values in order that the emergence and success of commerce, in time, will create an eschatological triumph of my values.
Commerce has certainly shown itself to be a triumphant historic force in the past century, emerging nearly victorious as a synthesis of political, moral and economic values.
Am I placing my values in that triumphant basket, like the Marxists did more than a century ago, to claim that historic forces carry their values forward?
I think we have both done a similar thing. The Marxists took the moral aspirations of small towns and rural life, turned them into sentimental projections and laid them on the notion of historic progress to achieve a “scientific certainty.”
I, having grown up immersed in commerce, have selected the emerging values of commerce as my own: meritocracy, technological bias and openness. Because I have selected the values of my immersion as my own values, I can easily, without hesitation ascribe them to the historic triumph of commerce.
To answer my original question: No, I didn't lay my values on commerce in order to get an eschatological triumph. I was born into those values as a result of the circumstances of my birth on top of an early triumph of commerce (the U.S.) and I am happy to see the wave continue to grow with me on it.
Whether commerce will triumph into the indefinite future is a nonsense question. Whether it will triumph for the rest of my life looks like a good bet.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.