In a time of austerity it is salutary once more to ask: what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? This is not to argue for a “Bible-says-it-all politics”, which has been out of fashion since our disastrous flirtation with it in the English Civil War of the 17th century. It is simply to recognise that all politics rest on assumptions; myths properly understood, not as fairytales but as archetypal stories about the human condition.
Both our economic activity and our political life must have ground beneath them. Human beings are not just blind globs of idling protoplasm but creatures with a name who live in a world of symbols and of dreams, not merely of matter.
If we are not only to survive this period of austerity, but even to learn to flourish in it, then we shall have to relearn a more adequate story of what is precious about human life. The story of the birth of the infant king in a poor family is a good starting place.
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Man cannot live at all without economics.