‘You’ll get pie in the sky when you die . . .’

The above is the origin of the phrase ‘pie in the sky’ and comes from a song by Joe Hill, an early American labour organiser, subject of the more famous song ‘Joe Hill’ (‘I dreamt I saw Joe Hill last night . . .etc. etc.’).  The implication of it is quite clear: better happiness in this life than in the context of some uncertain future.  And given the often terrible circumstances of the times in which he lived, it is also quite understandable.

Yet it also encapsulates the overall Marxist and secular liberal ideological position on things pertaining to life and death and the circumstances that may or may not exist beyond death.  The Marxist etc. position is a strictly materialist one: there is only this one life and nothing beyond it, and if you want pie you better be sure and get it in the here and now.  The question that arises is what happens if you are not able to supply that pie.

An ancillary aspect of religion has always been the resilience it creates in people—that increased ability to bear up under hardship, and even to find meaning in it.  Undermine this capacity to endure and what is left?  In this increasingly secular world, the natural reaction to scarcity or hardship is not one of patience, but rather of aggression.  We want what we want and we’ll have it, no matter what we have to do to get it, and no matter who has to pay for it!

In this era of untrammelled rights and expectations, we have crises on all fronts.  In health and policing and housing and education and whatever else you care to look at.  And the basis of these crises is not some temporary shortfall in funding that over time will correct itself.  We have instead allowed to develop social structures that are outstripping our normal capacity to fund them.  In a very real sense, we are, along with most advanced liberal economies, fundamentally, if not technically, bankrupt.  The ship sails on to the extent that we are still able to borrow money.  And should that capacity to borrow ever dry up, or our creditors come knocking at the door for their money back, then . . . ?

Mirabeau, one of the early and most moderate of leaders of the French Revolution, who died prematurely in 1791, left a prescient warning as to what was to later happen: ‘The people have been promised more than can be promised; they have been given hopes that will be impossible to realise . . .’