An Other Kingdom Quotes

“One Way to think of the market ideology and the empire is that it produces alienation and loss of human vitality. The culture flows from the assumption that the accumulation of commodities will make us safe and happy.”
― Walter Brueggemann, An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture

“If we want to follow the signs of the times, we have to look at how our core economic beliefs have produced a culture that makes poverty, violence, ill health, and fragile economic systems seem inevitable. Economic systems based on competition, scarcity, and acquisitiveness have become more than a question of economics; they have become the kingdom within which we dwell. That way of thinking invades our social order, our ways of being together, and what we value. It replicates the kingdom of ancient Egypt, Pharaoh’s kingdom. It produces a consumer culture that centralizes wealth and power and leaves the rest wanting what the beneficiaries of the system have.”
― Peter Block, An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture

“In his book Lincoln at Gettysburg: Words That Remade America, Garry Wills (2006) argues that it was Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address who transformed America’s individualism-oriented Constitution, with all its checks and balances, into a vision of the common good. Lincoln is the de facto godfather of the common good.”
― Peter Block, An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture

“You do not have enough, therefore you are not enough” is a powerful belief sustaining the market. The faith communities must believe “You are enough, and therefore you have enough.” And so must we all.”
― Peter Block, An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture

“The rising tide does not lift all boats. Those at the bottom and at the margin are considered undeserving; they are today’s equivalent of scripture’s widows, orphans, and immigrants.”
― Peter Block, An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture

“Cynicism always comes clothed in "realism". The alternatives to begin with an act of imagination. Can we imagine another way?”
― Walter Brueggemann, An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture

“If we construct an economy where quantities are controlled, based on the belief there is never enough for all, then we must compete to determine the winners. We begin this with grades in the first grade. There is the presumption that competition is essential and so there must be a normal distribution of grades. All students cannot receive high marks. If I get an A, someone in the class must perform poorly. It is an early lesson in how the marketplace ideology works. In a community organized around abundance, competition will occur, but it is not built into the system as a core design element. In a neighborly culture, the abundance of resources becomes the design element”
― Walter Brueggemann, An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture

“Grief is an element of aliveness and the answer to the denial the market demands of us. It is an index of our humanity. It is proof of the presence of our relatedness to each other. It is a communal practice that recognizes that choosing the wilderness of vulnerability, mystery, and anxiety was a good and life-affirming choice.”
― Walter Brueggemann, An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture

“The alternative to the free market consumer culture is a set of covenants that supports neighborly disciplines, rather than market disciplines, as a producer of culture. These non-market disciplines have to do with the common good and abundance as opposed to self-interest and scarcity. This neighborly culture is held together by its depth of relatedness, its capacity to hold mystery, its willingness to stretch time and endure silence.”
― Walter Brueggemann, An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture