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By Root 1128 0

allows the possibility that we will come into possession of something marvelous, graceful, and sublime, an object whose beauty reminds us of beauty at large, and the power of humanity to recognize such beauty in nature, to urge it into being in our art, and to embody it in our lives. In his 1956 prose poem “Meditations in an Emergency,” Frank O’Hara wrote, “I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life.”7 Human invention is a “sign” of hope and optimism, or at least “that people do not totally regret life.” Shopping may be a dicey way to go looking for the sublime, but it is possible to find something that reminds you that other people exist and work to press the world into design. I say this in defense of the material, the manufactured, the useless, and other items for sale.

There is another reason shopping brings happiness. Wealth, democracy, and capitalism all wore down the middle-sized community in which most people in history have found meaning, status, and celebration. As we’ll see in the next chapter, shopping is a way to buy back what money stole.

11

What Money Stole

There is a kind of community that is larger than your family and smaller than your country. Throughout history, family and country have been crucial realms of identity for people. They both have their problems, though: the family is small and limited, and the country is huge and vague. Complementing these powerful extremes was a medium-sized social world: town, parish, and trade (tinkers’ bars, blacksmiths’ guilds, glassmakers’ holidays). The events of this middle-level world were as mandatory as the obligations of family and country.

At the origins of modern times, and the origins of the United States, young democracy had begun to break down all these obligations: increasingly, it was not illegal to miss church on Sunday, and increasingly, people could work outside guildlike associations and follow their own rules. The average town got big enough that people did not know each other and could not effectively monitor each other’s behavior. It was all a dream of freedom. The real meaning of the “pursuit of happiness” was a bold claim that we ought to be allowed to peel off from the crowd and do our own thing. Enlightenment ideas about life suggested that individuals had value, and dignity, and had the natural right to try to be happy. The “pursuit of happiness” we find in the Declaration of Independence was a revival of an ancient idea. In private letters, Thomas Jefferson referred to himself as an Epicurean, and admired the ancient doctrine’s philosophical naturalism, its secularism, and its pursuit of the happy life. Epicurus argued that a happy life was best attained in relative seclusion, with friends, but away from general human affairs, and far from politics. Epicurus ran a coed, hedonistic philosopher’s retreat called the Garden, where people discussed ideas with no aim but the discussion’s own pleasure. Yet even Epicurus’s antipolitical philosophy is, in itself, a political expression, since it requires a government that could tolerate it. It was that kind of politics that Jefferson supported, especially as a defender of the separation of church and state.

Jefferson had other philosophical support for his involvement in politics. He was no stranger to the Aristotelian idea that a good life is one led in public governance, and that a moral life is one spent promoting the public good. Yet the Epicurean model was much more popular in Jefferson’s world. Jefferson described his government service as a duty that he could not deny, but insisted his heart is best reflected by Monticello, the civilized man’s country estate. For a lot of people at this time, happiness was an idleness enlivened by nature, hobbies, and study. It was retirement, and, busy as it often was, the point of it all was virtuous pleasure. The pursuit of happiness, then, was a utopian fantasy of independence, even solitude, available mostly to the rich, though since there