Spirituality and Economics

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.

MORE TO COME.   COMMENTS THUS FAR?