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Welcome to Spirituality and Economics, a site devoted to the
discussion of spirituality and economic development. The purpose of
this site is to generate discussion and awareness about the merits of
how spirituality can inform human development in general but economic development in particular. I believe that the fundamental principles
and perspectives of spirituality have much insight to offer regarding
how the world is and how human beings might live in harmony with it.
In fact, I believe that a truly sustainable model of development must
be grounded in a spiritual perspective. One that is not necessarily religious but one that suggests
that we and all life around us are all interconnected and sufficient. A perspective
such as this has wide ranging implications for how we treat one another
and how we treat the natural world on which we depend.
Who am I, who is my neighbour, what is this thing called earth and the
universe. What is real? What is truth? The great religions and many
great thinkers have written libraries on these questions. Some of their
answers ring true and others have not. I'm not an expert on cosmology or theology or nor am I about to review what
each great teacher has written but I will paraphrase some the wisdom
teachings that I have found to be enlightening.
What is Reality
Reality
or Existence is difficult to define in words because it encompasses
everything and therefore transcend words or language. However, some
words hint at its meaning, including infinite energy, love, awareness,
conscousness, unity and/or God. These are the attributes at the core existence
beyond (and at the same time including) our three
dimensional existence. The physical existence that we find ourselves
in is a perception or a particular filter that we have taken on when we become human.
This perception is a three dimensional perspective grounded in the 5
human senses. There are greater realities beyond the five senses which
science and mystics hint at but very few have experienced.
Who Am I
Who
am I is almost the same question as What is Reality, for "I am" part of
Existence and all of Existence is reflected in me. I am infinite
energy. I am limitless. I am love. I am interconnected with all
existence and I too am God. Essentially, I am a spiritual being, as
the saying goes, living a physical existence.
Again, as a consequence of incarnating and entering into physical existence all humans have a sense of separation, of limitedness and of
fear of survival. This separation or fear is one of our greatest
obstacles to realizing our limitlessness and unity and is the cause of
our greed, self-loathing, judging of others, hatred and other
contracting emotions.
What is the Purpose of Existence
If
I am fundamentally limitless, interconnected, love or energy, what is the purpose my existence? Its simple: I am here along with all other beings to explore life and in so doing discover my sufficiency and my unity with all creation. I do this through choosing a plethora of circumstances throughout my life and react and/or learn from them. The more I choose, the more I learn, the more learn, the more I become aware and the more aware I become, the more conscious I become of my own sufficiency (my own completeness) and my unity with creation.
Human Relationships
Human
relationships are an essential part of human existence. In the
physical sense, we are born of parents and are raised in a social
setting. In a spiritual sense, we are limitless, interconnected beings
that are in fact inseparable. In human relationships we hold a mirror
to ourselves, we see ourselves or our separateness in others, which
allows us to explore ourselves. Ultimately, however, the dance of
human relationships reflects the dance we have with have with life.
The more unified or sufficient we feel, the more we see the illusion of
separation between ourselves and our neighbours and the more compassion
we feel for them. Indeed, the more we feel connected to our neighbours, the more we realize that our well-being is tied up with their's. The more we feel conncected to our neighbours, the less inclined are we let them neighbour starve, suffer sickness or to hurt them.
Humanity's Relationship with Earth
Humanity
and the earth are interconnected as well, both phyically and spiritually. We
are all made up of the same basic elements of the earth, indeed we can
not live without these elements held in fine balance by the earth. We
also share the foundations of basic existence with the earth; namely
infinite, limitless energy.
Despite these basic similarities and in keeping with how humanity often
perceives itself, we often perceive ourselves as separate from the earth,
which we overtly express through our actions and choices. We consume
and pollute the earth, we disregard the health and well-being of all
other creatures, as if the earth and our fellow inhabitants were
somehow separate from us and as if they were somehow infinitely
disposable. The earth and all its creatures make up a diverse
and interconnected web of consciousness that we are a part of. It reflects our thoughts,
our choices and actions and the greater the mass of these activities, the
greater the influence on the earth. Hence, when we continue to think
and act on an ever greater scale as if we and the earth are separate,
the earth and the universe reflect our choices. Ultimately, if our
choices of separation continue to grow, the earth will indulge us in this fantasy us and release us. It will scratch us off its
surface like a dog scratches fleas from its skin.
Modern Economics (Neo-Classical Economics)
Modern
economics or neo-classical economics as practiced today does not have much to say about
ultimate reality, let alone spirituality although its founder was a very spiritual man. Somehow his writings on ethics and religion never really became integrated into his economic philosopy and that has had an immense
impact on how modern society has evolved. Modern economics is grounded in a
materialist reality,
that can only be explored in terms of our five senses. Furthermore, it abstracts moral, social,
environmental and psychological aspects of human activity for the purposes of
theoretical rigour to create a fairly one dimensional human being (homo
economicus). And it stipulates that man is a rational,
material being, with unlimited wants, living in a world of scarcity.
He is most happy when he is maximizing his utility or or amassing
wealth and consuming goods and services. This occurs most efficiently,
classical economics suggests, when the exchange of goods and services
in the market place is left relatively unhindered by social forces
(like governments), leaving the free hand of the market to allocate
goods and services via a competitive price system. The goal of this
narrowly defined being or homo economicus is then to consume and to do
so efficiently. The motivation of this economic agent is fear of scarcity.
Economic theory and policy rarely considers
the social qualities
of man and his need for love, family, connection, happiness and
ultimatey spirituality. It eschews the issue of equity or the impact
of
consumption on the environment. If the environment, however, it is considered as a the resource or waste sink.
Surprisingly,
this philosophy and the market system on which it is
based has been very successful, when measured on purely physical
grounds. It has brought immense material wealth to billions of people,
since its founding in the early 1700s. Indeed, the free market system
has provided very well for the basic needs of most of its participants
and untold luxuries for a few. And when the free market system is
measured against any of its other predecessors or contemporaries it
appears to be the best system we have. Compared to the feudal or
mercantile economic systems, it could easily be viewed as superior,
since these systems were very sloppy at allocating goods and services
and tended to concentrate wealth in the hands of the fortunate few.
And compared to the communist system of the 20th century, it may be
viewed as superior since wherever it has been employed it has failed, largely due to the incapacity of the
state to respond effectively to the complexity of human needs
and wants.
Yet if the free market system
and its modern economic philosophy have been more or less successful at
serving the basic needs of the majority of its participants, it has
not been without its serious shortcomings. There continues to be poverty
amongst great wealth in many of the modern capitalist economies and there
is increasing degradation of the natural environment on which humanity
depends.
I believe that part of the reason that the modern economic system continues to experience poverty and worsening
environmental degredation derives from its rather limited view of man
and reality and its paramoncy over all social policy. The world
might be fine if we recognized modern economic philosophy for what it is, namely a
fairly narrow study of efficiency, that does not really apply to the
complexity of the world. However, this is not the case. Modern
economic theory drives economic policy, which drives political,
social and environmental policy as well as the mass consumption
which dominates our modern lifestyle. The result is that we interact with
business and our governments, the earth and to some extent our fellowman as simply consumers. We are told endlessly
in the media (and we believe it) that we can only be happy if we
consume or have more money or improve our material well-being. And so we
consume and consume and work hard to consume some more. Yet all the
while we feel empty inside and the earth continues to degrade.
And why is this? Because our perspective of reality is wrong. We know deep down inside that we are more than consumers and the sum of our physical needs. We know that we are social beings, emotional beings, mental beings, and spiritual beings. And we know that the earth is more than a warehouse or an outhouse but rather intimate part of us.
So what if the study of
economics considered the whole person when it posited economic policy? What if economics contributed to a wider
concept of human well-being and the evolution of consciousness; what
would economic theory look like and what would the economy look like?
These questions may be viewed as an anethema to many modern economists
or business people. Surely, we could not expect prices to capture
more complex aspects of human welfare, they would say. Surely, we
could not expect business people to consider the greater good of
society, as they struggle to compete in the ruthless marketplace. And
I say why not? Why shouldn't economics foster happiness and the
evolution of human consciousness?
Attempts
have been made to expand economic theory to incorporate a more
wholistic view of reality and I believe these attempts are bringing
humanity closer to a more beneficial social system. Some of these new
theories are attempting to incorporate biological theory into economics
and others are attempting to incorporate various social values into
economic theory. The theories are interesting in that they try to
"internalize" natural and social externalities into the market by pricing them. Environmental and ecological economics, welfare economics and sustainable development theory comes out of this
theoretical work.
The weakness of this line of theory is that it continues to rely on physical or external signals (price incentives or disincentives) to steer human behaviour. Man is not expected to draw upon his moral or spiritual compass to discipline his greed. He is still treated primarily as a physical, rational entity with little or responsibility towards his fellow human beings and the environment. And the problem is this approach is that no amount of external incentives or disincentives (be they prices or jail) will entirely discipline human greed or fear of scarcity. It is only a shift in perspective, an internal shift, a shift in attitude that will encourage him to behave differently. Of course external incentives or disincentives can reinforce this attitude but it is essentially a spiritual or internal change that needs to take place for real lasting change to occur.
Sufficiency Economics
I propose a new economics that uses as its basic purpose the advancement of human consciousness. And I call this new economics "sufficiency
economics", reflecting perhaps our biggest challenge and at the same
time our biggest asset ...our belief in our own
sufficiency...our belief in our own capacity to survive and prosper
(while not compromising the health of the planet or the survival and
prosperity of future generations).
What is Sufficiency
Sufficiency
is a state of being, whereby, at the core of our awareness, we
perceive that we are complete and lacking nothing.
Regardless of the circumstances we find ourselves in, we believe that we have the
talents, abilities and
awareness to interact with those circumstances in a fashion that is
beneficial for us (and the rest of existence). It is the natural state
of our being and the more we appreciate and act in accordance with this
aspect of our nature, the more we actually "feel" sufficient and
thereby less fearful of scarcity. Conversely, the more we fear our insufficiency and
judge ourselves as lacking, the more we reduce our feeling of
sufficiency and increase our fears.
Critics would say that
this idea of sufficiency is counter-intuitive to modern science and
psychology and perhaps even to common sense, since human history is
rife with examples of our seeming repeated insufficiency - famines,
poverty, wars, genocides and suffering due to natural disasters. The
critics would be right in saying that human history is fraught with
pain and suffering and our propensity to experience scarcity but this
evidence does not detract from our capacity to experience the
opposite. Our history has been built largely on perspective of fear, a
fear of insufficiency, a fear for our survival, and even a fear of
fear. Yet human history also shows that we are capable of great love,
charity, sacrifice, sharing and innovation, It is this aspect of our
human nature that we now, more than ever, need to appreciate and foster.
It is our belief in our own sufficiency and the abundance of the
universe that we need to start to nurture and rediscover if we are to
break out of this historical cycle of destruction. It starts with
individuals appreciating their own sufficiency and then interacting accordingly with their fellow man and the planet.
Critics
might also say that this idea of sufficiency is simply a bunch of fluff
and that the hard cold realities of the world demand a science of
economics that practically deals with scarcity, since that is reality. My response to this is that our predicament at
this point in human evolution is due essentially to this very perspective and that a new perspective is needed, a more spiritual perspective. How we
see the world is the problem. If we see our lives as lacking, if we set
out to prove resources are scarce, that is how they will be. We may
tinker with prices and try to capture externalities. We may
implement progressive taxation systems or fairer trading systems, which
may ameliorate some distortions or inequities in the economy but if the
fear of survival or poverty underlie our perspective, society will
to find ways cheat the system, hoard wealth and propagate scarcity.
The solution to our problem is about a changing our perspective; namely
from a view of scarcity to a view of sufficiency and from fear of
humankind to trust in the sufficiency of humankind. Its that simple.
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