Ed. Note: Six months after this review was published, several women came forward with serious accusations of sexual and spiritual abuse against Jean Vanier. We were unaware of these allegations at the time of publication because the report in which the accusations and supporting evidence were first made public had not yet been published.
In his commentary on the Gospel of John, Jean Vanier writes that:
[t]he threat of today’s world with its globalized economy is not just unfettered capitalism but overwhelming commercialization. Advertising and public relations try to shape our cultures, thoughts, imaginations and lives. … Money has become the focus of cultures worldwide. It is being used to cultivate an acute individualism: “wealth, all the signs of wealth, houses, cars, gadgets, for me and for my family and my group!”[1]
What is striking about these comments – written in 2004, four years before the global financial crisis which made such views common-sense – is how closely Vanier’s definition of individualism maps on to my definition of community. I am willing to tut-tut with the rest of the throng when spiritual leaders decry individualism.
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