Does the Market god smile upon you?

Make no mistake about it—the Market is the great god of our age

The Market isn’t a god, you say? Let’s see how we talk about it.

Sometimes it comes in the form of a bull, other times in the form of a bear. It’s invisible hand guides everything, and we should trust it to bring us profit even if today it only brings us adversity. If only we can divine its purposes— buy when we should buy, sell when we should sell—we’ll find ourselves rewarded for our righteous behavior, and rise above the unwashed masses with the Market’s greatest gifts bestowed up on us:

Wealth. Security. Ease.

Whether the Market is actually a god or not is beside the point. But we act like it’s a god of the variety that flourished when city-states were the hip new thing. It’s as unavoidable as Ares was for an ancient Spartan the night before battle, or Baal for a Canaanite farmer hoping for Spring rains. We hope Market will smile upon us, and our great priests even offer it sacrifices (known as layoffs) in moments of great crisis, hoping to regain its favor. Those of us less favored can buy a lottery ticket and hope for a life changing answered prayer.

When Market rewards us, we do well. We might even live the good life.

Of course, we can’t just leave the Market, even if we wanted to. It iseverywhere, after all. Our lives and livelihood depend on it. A few people have opted out of it— some starving artists, social workers and ministers perhaps. But most of us need to play the Market game to get by. And to be good at it.

We do have a choice though. To paraphrase a better person than me, we can be in the Market but not of it. We can choose lives defined by consuming more stuff, and by producing more stuff to be consumed. Or can choose lives defined by relationships and shared values.

We’ll still be producers and consumers, of course, but those roles won’t define us. Relationships will.