Shoes, tea parties, and happiness

Tamara Mellon, in her own words, is the “inspiration, the heart and soul” behind Jimmy Choo. Before moving into her newly acquired 7200 square foot condo in New York City, she enlarged the bedroom closet into an L-shaped space that is 15 by 23 feet at its widest. She’s lost count of how many pairs of shoes she owns somewhere after reaching 800. A recent Wall Street Journal article provides photos and more details on the extent of her wardrobe (Rachel Dodes, “Jimmy Choo's (Shoe) Closet,” February 6, 2010).

That article prompted a couple of different musings. First, Mellon’s lifestyle (and that of most middle and upper class Americans) starkly contrasts with the lifestyle of the very poor, including many of Haiti’s earthquake victims. Assuredly, some Haitians live comfortably. But significant numbers of Haitians, prior to the recent earthquake, subsisted on the edge of one of the world’s poorest societies. If that were not true, Haitian parents would not give their children to misguided Christian missionaries from Idaho in the hope that the children would have a better life than was possible in Haiti. The desperation and lack of hope that combine to cause a parent to give away a beloved child willingly, a child whom presumably the parent loves as deeply as any parent we know loves her/his child, is difficult to imagine.

Attempting to reconcile my affluence with Jesus’ injunction to love my neighbor as myself leaves me feeling guiltily uncomfortable. Yet I persist in my lifestyle, rationalizing that the affluence of a Tamara Mellon makes me look relatively poor. I also know that we do not have very many good answers about how to aid other nations in their economic development effectively. Charitable assistance may alleviate immediate suffering, which is important, but does little to move a nation or community towards long-term prosperity. I wonder what Jesus might think of a closet full of clothes for a single person that has 800 pairs of shoes and similar surfeits of other items.

Second, a group of angry Americans has gathered in Nashville, TN, this weekend for the first Tea Party Convention. Those Americans appear united by their anger at the status quo and divided by their proposed solutions. Some of the rhetoric is simply silly, e.g., former U.S. Representative and 2008 presidential candidate Tom Tancredo declaring that people who voted for Obama in 2008 could not spell “vote” or say it in English put a committed socialist into the White House. Sadly, much of the rhetoric is implicitly white supremacist, railing against non-English speakers and those with non-European ancestors. The rhetoric also troublingly weaves a narrow, bigoted form of Christianity with politics, suggesting that God best loves an English speaking, white, capitalist America. (Ann Gerhart and Philip Rucker, “The Tea Party is still taking shape,” Washington Post, February 6, 2010; Tim Reid, “Tea Party turns nasty: ‘It’s our country – let’s take it back’,” Times Online, February 6, 2010)

The current recession fuels much of that anger, leaving some in the Tea Party feeling threatened and others certain that their prosperous lifestyles are rapidly nearing an end. Meanwhile, the poorest Americans do not have enough to eat and mostly have no hope of ever sharing in the American dream. In other words, the Tea Party movement represents a further tattering of the fabric of American society. Their xenophobia, wanting to exclude any new immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, is a function of the desperation they feel in trying to hold on to their prosperity.

Studies of happiness show that a person’s standing relative to others has more of an impact on that person’s level of happiness than does the person’s absolute standing (Richard Layard, Happiness (New York: Penguin, 2005), pp. 149-166). By global standards, the vast majority of Tea Party supporters are among the economic elite. By American standards, especially compared to several years ago, these Tea Party supporters are moving backwards, less well off than before and losing ground when compared to their neighbors. This similarly explains some of the anger at the large bonuses financial company executives have received even though those companies accepted government bailouts. Nobody is bailing out the average American; foreclosures continue to spread; unemployment remains unacceptably high (did people getting jobs or quitting to search for employment cause last month’s decline of 0.3% in the U.S. unemployment rate?).

Super bowl weekend is a often a time of excess in the United States. Perhaps the combat of two teams on the field, playing a game that has become far more than a mere sports contest, is an appropriate metaphor for the struggle between nations and within people over a moral lifestyle.