Pastor Sid's Journal

A Tunnel Society

I came across the notion that societies of wealth, power and greed can often be described as 'tunnel societies.' I quote:

“In a critique of the global economy, the postcare process of greed is referred to as a “tunnel society.” In a tunnel, traffic must travel through as quickly and as safely as possible and then depart out the other end; traffic must reach the light at the end of the tunnel. However, in order to achieve a maximal flow of traffic, only some vehicles suitable for tunnel traffic are welcome in the tunnel…. In principle, the trademark of a tunnel society is a ceaseless expansion of production and productivity, the purpose of which is to transport us to the light at the end of the tunnel: a rising standard of living, along with a substantial enough increase in prosperity to permit us to fund environmental protection, social and medical care, and development aid for poor countries. But entering and maintaining the process of the tunnel requires “sacrifices.” Because some people do not have the capacity to work as efficiently as others, they are excluded from the production process. Some become unemployed; others, such as some who are physically or developmentally challenged, cannot handle the demands of the production process. Likewise, maintaining the process of the tunnel requires expulsion. Because increased efficiency requires us to ignore the persistent demands of the environment and of people who have been ostracized, in a tunnel economy we find it necessary to expel environmental and social burdens onto other sectors of society, including the state…. Finally, the tunnel process requires extraction. In a competitive climate, business finds it necessary to extract as much as possible from the services that land, labor, and capital provide. But this extraction gives rise to the need for society to remedy the distress caused by unemployment, environmental destruction, and workplace stress. The tunnel society is therefore a postcare society…. With a kind of tunnel vision, we then appeal for more production to finance more postcare expenditures…. Perhaps we will continue to produce and produce, but the promised prosperity will never arrive."1

Even in the church we often have this attitude. For the sake of progress and production we set things up in such a way that some people are pushed aside (and it's not always the people we initially think). Have we cultivated an attitude in the western church where our churches can, like our society, be accused of being "postcare?" It's a question I find myself pondering today.

1. (Bob Goudzwaard and Harry de Lange, Beyond Poverty and Affluence: Toward an Economy of Care with a Twelve-Step Program for Economic Recovery (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995) 135-36.)