Prophet Motives

It’s not always about the money.

A friend and I were talking recently about the urgent necessity of developing alternative energy sources when the friend said, matter-of-factly, “Of course, people have to be incentivized to do that development…”

We’ve all heard this mantra a hundred times. This time, it stopped me in my tracks and I abruptly sputtered, “Incentivized how?”

“Why, they need to be able to make a profit on those things.”

“Says who?” I responded wisely.

Because I know, and you know deep down, that we are really “incentivized” by almost everything but money. It’s just that we’ve been sold on the profit motive, and now we can’t get out of the contract.

We assume it’s all about the money

First of all, the best definition of money I’ve ever seen is by leftside365 on the Urban Dictionary:

Money is… “The little pieces of paper and earth that control all of mankind. It is ironic that we are slaves to trees and rocks.”

So on the road to progress and improvement, we keep stumbling over the assumption that people are only motivated by money; by profit. That assumption sits there like a speed bump, tearing up the suspension of anyone trying to do something to improve the world because it’s the right thing to do.

Furthermore, some will assert that the profit motive is the only pure motive, because capitalism, they say, is somehow God’s favorite economic system. (I suppose, if you believe that God actually owns everything, then God is the ultimate capitalist. That means our job is to wrestle things away from God, or pay God off, instead of God sharing them with us. I can’t believe in a God like that and I hope you don’t, either.)

Why all that propaganda?

But if profit were really our most universal and divinely inspired motivator, then why do people keep having to teach it and tout it and promote it to everyone, 24 hours a day? All through the 20th century and into the 21st, Americans have been bombarded continually with the twin messages that profit drives progress and success equals wealth. Advertising, get-rich-quick schemes and seminars, Horatio Alger stories, the ever-popular Cinderella trope, and a blind faith in capitalism combine with people’s natural dose of acquisitiveness to cement the message.

Even some churches get in the game by preaching a “gospel of prosperity,” popular with people either hungry for the wealth they don’t have or craving absolution for the wealth they do have. In that worldview, the rich are blessed and righteous, rather than camels trying to get into heaven’s tent through the eye of a needle. Camels are strong and sometimes useful, but they’re smelly and they’re mean. Those are just facts. About camels.

When someone hesitantly asks, “Well, what about the poor, the sick, the orphaned? They don’t even have a chance to make a profit, do they?” Ah. Then we are told that we live in a meritocracy, which sounds vaguely moral but is actually a euphemism for a cutthroat, winner-take-all system. Even progressive proponents will earnestly argue that all we need to make the meritocracy fair is to create a “level playing field,” and then everyone bickers about how to get that.

But even on a “level playing field,” we must still frantically fight for our life’s necessities, like kids scrambling for Easter eggs on the church lawn. (See what I did there… “scrambling” for “eggs”?) If you’ve ever seen that sight, you know that no matter how level the field, the big kids get the most eggs. Not because they are better than the others. They’re just bigger.

Reasonable people can disagree on the relative virtues of a society that rewards merit with profit, but we must account for the way such a society encourages the unrestrained aggression we have come to accept as the essence of our humanity. Even on a “level playing field,” some will win, but the field will usually end up littered with bodies. And crushed chocolate bunnies.

And finally, the sad truth is that the best among us may die broke, with no reward in this world at all. History may remember some of those examplars for their contributions, but countless others will simply return to stardust.

Your promised profits may not even be profits.

Worshiping the “profit motive” keeps us busy, so we continue supporting the winners and forget that we are often the losers. But most of us don’t live on “profits”; we live on wages earned for work we do.

Despite what obscenely paid executives try to tell us, wages reflect much more than “hard work.” What we earn is also determined by our nature, our nurture, our education, our privileges of race, gender, poverty, or disability/ability. Workers can save their wages, and call it a “profit,” but that’s really not the same as the “profit” garnered from owning a business or investing piles of money.

But that’s the capitalist way, and we have been sold on capitalism largely because we dream of being capitalists ourselves. But most of us really aren’t. We have tiny token investments, but we don’t control capital; we don’t live on our profits. We still need jobs.

It’s as if the powers that be have set it up so that if we focus only on satisfying the most basic of the needs on Maslow’s hierarchy, we will be repaid at least with some safety, the second need. After that, we are on our own. Support for meeting the higher needs is slim. And when we dream other dreams, when we want more from life, we are sternly instructed to stick to chasing money and gadgets and fantasies.

We are so much more than that.

Human beings live for much more than money.

We are motivated to search for love, even to sacrifice for a soulmate. In addition to love, we crave the pleasures of sex, which is the fun part of the essential drive to perpetuate the species.

People are driven to create, to make art or music or stories; to design useful things to be pleasing to the eye. They will pursue this passion even in poverty, embodying the stereotype of the starving artist. In that deceitful narrative, we may enjoy the beauty they create but never once question why they are starving. Apparently, we think they should starve — until they turn that artistic vision into something to sell.

The desire to help others is a genuine motive that has been particularly deplored of late. People who want to contribute to the common good are seen as either secretly selfish and manipulative, craving respect for their piety, or as suckers. I don’t know which I am, but I still want to help people. So sue me.

And sometimes that desire to help others is elevated to a pursuit of glory. I’m not talking about some narcissistic need for attention and adulation. I’m talking about the times when ordinary people rise to extraordinary situations, where the only way out is to embrace self-sacrifice. That kind of glory.

My favorite contemporary example of such a moment is the scene in Aliens, when ‘ target=”_blank”>Vasquez and Gorman blow up the tunnel, and themselves, so the others can survive. But those fictional characters only symbolize the reality of thousands, millions, who chose glory instead of despair.

Some people desperately want to know. They hate being in the dark about the universe (which most of us are, most of the time). So they study and probe and experiment, which allows us to have science and tools and solutions to problems. And maybe someday alternative energy sources.

For some, knowledge is not enough. They want to go beyond knowledge and search for wisdom, or the divine, or a different kind of knowing. They see this miraculous world and they sense there is a spiritual dimension to it all. Some emerge as teachers and leaders; others are content with obscurity, so long as they can contemplate the mysteries.

These are the prophet motives

All of these examples represent the deep needs to which prophets speak (hence, a legitimate basis for the execrable pun). Prophecies are much more than predictions, and prophesy is not just a dubious “message” spelled out on a Ouija board. (“You’re moving the thingy!” “No, I’m not!”) (The other one is always moving the thingy.)

In my mind, a prophet proclaims the truth about people and exhorts them to be better than that. A lot better.

All kinds of people have been known as prophets, either in their time or later. Ranker has a fun little list, and you may have your own list. Here are some of the classics, each expressing what we should be trying to gain:

• The prophet Micah, in the Hebrew Bible: “Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.” Nothing in there about maximizing your 401K.
• The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) summarizes his directives: “Be steadfast in prayer and regular in charity.” Simple. Moreover, one of the Five Pillars of Islam is Zakāt: Charity, ensuring that Muslims put their money where their mouths are.
• Mother Teresa reminded us simply: “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
• But Jesus breaks it down to the ultimate game of Truth or Dare:

“What does it profit for a man to gain the world but lose his soul?”

I believe we deserve to think beyond our so-called profit motive to the prophet motives: the ones that lift up our souls and rescue us from a life bottom-feeding on the bottom line.

If we look we can find those motives in our secret desires to be better; wiser; braver about following paths that enrich hearts, minds, and humanity.

A prophet motive urges us to be more loving, more creative, more caring, more generous. When we put our desire for wealth into proper perspective, we might be able to nurture these better desires. We might rediscover wisdom, glory, and reverence.

We might, indeed, free ourselves to invest our time on this earth in our lives, the lives of others, and the God of our understanding, no matter the name.

Then, I think we’d pretty much have it all.

Everything worth having, anyway.