How could I not link to a column that so eloquently describes the way that culture creates "the horizons of the possible"? Brooks is spot on. Now the culture-making question: what cultural goods could we shape or create that would change "the culture of debt"?

re: consumption, debt, horizons of the possible, money, stewardship

Andy:

Individuals don’t build their lives from scratch. They absorb the patterns and norms of the world around them.

Decision-making — whether it’s taking out a loan or deciding whom to marry — isn’t a coldly rational, self-conscious act. Instead, decision-making is a long chain of processes, most of which happen beneath the level of awareness. We absorb a way of perceiving the world from parents and neighbors. We mimic the behavior around us. Only at the end of the process is there self-conscious oversight.

According to this view, what happened to McLeod, and the nation’s financial system, is part of a larger social story. America once had a culture of thrift. But over the past decades, that unspoken code has been silently eroded.