Birthrights and Pottage

Genesis 25:29-34 King James Version

29 And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint: 30 And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom. 31 And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. 32 And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me? 33 And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. 34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.

I found myself thinking at 2:30 a.m. about what I would write here, with kittens tucked between us in bed, purring and keeping me awake. It seemed like a good idea to go a little lighter after yesterday's Veteran's Day muse, but after reading my Florida news update on the iPad, I felt another jeremiad coming on. Maybe there will be kittens tomorrow.

Nearly three decades ago, as I was settling into the postwar phase of life and trying to understand what I witnessed around me in my new hometown of Panama City, I purchased and tore through The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction by Edward Ayers. One of the main takeaways from his analysis of how that era formed a foundation for what happened afterwards was that civic boosterism, particularly in small- and medium-sized Southern towns, led to an attitude of doing damn near anything to get industries and businesses to move there. At the time it was at least understandable--we'd lost the war, much of our infrastructure was in ruins, and folks needed a way to live. And over time, the chamber of commerce and Rotary crowd largely succeeded, as the center of gravity of our national economy drifted ever south.

As often happens, unfortunately, the mindset and set of values that emerged from that moment long survived their utility. Traveling pretty much solely on the one-word argument of "jobs", we sold our natural resources to developers, and our neighbors to carpetbaggers who built a different sort of economy out of the undereducated, subservient labor pool they found here. Soon you couldn't walk on your own beach because it was blocked by high-rises or millionaire beach-house owners who claimed in the name of property law a right to control the sand right down to the mean high water line. Our labor force could not find Vermont on a map, and was happy to make $12 an hour because the ones who couldn't escape had no leverage to make a better deal. The towns where they live became ringed with necklaces of chain restaurants and box stores along the bypass.

The problem isn't exclusively southern. In The Place You Love is Gone: Progress Hits Home, Melissa Holbrook Pierson muses over the loss of identity of her hometown of Akron, Ohio in its period of rapid growth decades ago, and its current desuetude and decay as industry and people drift away. Her mourning, as I recall (it's been over a decade since I read the book), was over the loss of character of the place, as it became a homogenous mass of strip malls and what my wife calls "Knox-boxes", after the ugly tract homes that now cover the hills that were once her family's farm.

My view out the window this morning suggests it doesn't have to be so, as I ponder the old Victorians that surround me in this neighborhood in rural New York. One of my old chamber of commerce friends back in Bay County would no doubt point out that the reason they don't have acres of ugly, overpriced, largely identical homes up here, or strip malls filled with auto parts stores or Wal-Marts staffed by workers making minimum wage, is that no one is coming here, and the place has a static population. And this set of choices carries costs, as well--pretty much everything costs more, taxes are high, and you still have poverty in the hills that surround this place.

But where would you rather live, given a realistic choice not driven solely by the need to find a job? We are seeing that question answered in this moment as in no other in our country's history. Those whose vocation allows them to work wherever there's an internet connection are flocking to places like Corning, and eschewing the cookie-cutter suburbia that is the price of selling away our birthright. And places like this are in fact our birthright; it doesn't have to be the other way.

Every society reflects a series of choices, some already made for us and some we live into over time. We tell ourselves it must be so, that we have bills to pay and cannot pass up opportunities to mine the value out of the resources, natural and human, of our communities. We'll live someplace bearable someday over a horizon we never seem to reach. We are Esau, taking that quick moment of gratification without realizing what we've lost in the process. For most, there never will be a better world for our waning days. We'll work in Plano or Alpharetta or Hoover or Brandon, and we'll grow old and die there.

But there is always an alternative, if we just pay attention. Genesis tells us that Esau was a great hunter; he could well have fed himself, with a little patience and a roasting spit over a fire. But instead he chose the path of least resistance to sustenance, and in the process lost who he was as he failed in the act of stewardship of carrying on his role in his family. In our day, rather than a fine meal it is the money that rolls in the door with each ugly real estate development or commercial sprawl, covering over what once was, taking away from our descendants much of what made life worth living in our little towns. That is a choice.

We as a nation, and not just in the South, are ill-inclined ever to view things in the long-term. From the stock market to our local economic development councils to our politics to what we eat and drink, return on investment is based on immediate profit or gratification. We have lost sight of our role as stewards of our physical space and our society, and betrayed not only our grandchildren but ourselves. Every action, every decision we make as individuals and as communities starts a ripple that goes on for generations, and perhaps the worst we can do is lose sight of, or fail to account for, the long-term costs of our short-term gains. It is a path to somewhere unlivable. It is truly a loss of our birthright, and the birthright of our children. And once it's gone, it's gone.