The Spiritual Awakening of Economic Man
TL;DR: We begin to tell the untold tale of how economic luminaries from Adam Smith to modern Nobel prize winners colluded to strip ethics out of influential theories of economics. And how economics has much to gain by intertwining itself with universal spiritual principles and our shared human values.
Awakened Economics tells two previously untold tales.
The first is how economic luminaries from Adam Smith to modern Nobel prize winners colluded to strip ethics out of influential theories of economics.
The second is about the intertwinement of economics with spirituality.
In both tales, we have a clear protagonist, and a clear antagonist.
The antagonist is a school of economics called “neoclassical economics.”
The protagonist is our collective spiritual wisdom, as taught to us over the centuries by countless masters in numerous spiritual traditions, and manifested in the form of our shared, universal human values.
If you have never heard of “neoclassical economics,” don’t worry. I’ll explain it to you here. For now, all you need to know is that it’s the way economics is taught to thousands of students every year in universities around the world. And what they’re taught is this: that the beating heart of economics is powered by unbridled self-interest and the maximization of pleasure and profit.
We’ll also take on an offspring of neoclassical economics called “behavioral economics.” Again, don’t worry if you’ve never heard of that either. I’ll explain it to you here as well. For now, all you have to know is that behavioral economists claim to incorporate psychology into economics, and that they have been incredibly successful at convincing the world that they are a genuinely new approach to economics; behavioral economists have won 4 Sveriges Riksbank Prizes* prizes, and received glowing press.
While their claim about psychology is a little bit true, mostly it is not. What we’ll show here is that behavioral economics draws on the same corrosive principles as neoclassical economics. Even worse: behavioral economists quite often use their considerable prestige for no higher purpose that to get people to buy more stuff.
If the word “spirituality” turns you off, or causes you to yawn, or if you’ve simply never given it much thought, don’t worry about that either. All I ask for now is that you keep an open mind and know that:
Spirituality and Religion are Not the Same Thing
First, this is not a blog about religion. Religion and spirituality are often two entirely different things. Religion is about shared ritual and belief among a group of people who congregate to honor that which they consider hallowed. Certainly, religion can be a gateway toward spirituality; for example, via compassionate, open-hearted readings of our sacred texts- something we’ll do much of in this blog! More frequently, it is not. When believers’ minds and hearts close, and their beliefs harden into dogma, and their ritual into zealotry, then much harm can be done in the name of religion, including bigotry, intolerance, and even violence towards those with alternative beliefs.
Spirituality, on the other hand, is about that which is universal and connects us all. In other words, what we shall focus on here are those universal, spiritual values that can bring us together, not narrow canons that separate us into groups and sects.
Nor does religion or spiritual devotion have a monopoly on teaching us about living a life of goodness. Well-intentioned people who do not hold any religious beliefs, nor believe in a Supreme Being, can arrive at similar moral conclusions as those who do. For the devout, the start point of a moral life is faith born of the soul, and the subsequent trodden path is the sacred teachings of their particular religion. For non-believers, the start point of a moral life is mental intelligence, and the subsequent trodden path is rationality. Philosophy and psychology, in other words, can often teach us as much about living an ethical life, as do our spiritual masters and sacred texts.
Finally, you intuitively know a lot more about spirituality than you might consciously be aware, and you’ve likely had spiritual experiences whether you recognized them or not.
Spirituality is hearing the sound of singing birds and feeling a joy at their sonority. It is gazing at the vast ocean, or the expansive planes, or the thriving forests, or the mammoth peaks, and marveling at their majesty. It is when the family dog places its head on our lap or the family cat purrs there, and we sense their unconditional love and trust. It is when parents first hold their newborn between them, and feel a love they never previously knew existed. It is when a hurricane, or earthquake, or tornado strike, and our heart is stirred by our neighbors’ misfortune; we feel their suffering as if it were our own, and our first instinct is to rush to the aid of those afflicted.
These are special moments when suddenly, without effort, we break free from the confines of our individualism, and feel a deep connection with our family, our neighbors, our community, with nature and even with the cosmos itself. These are all spiritual experiences.
Our Proposal: the Intertwinement of Spirituality with Economics
Finally, if you can’t imagine how economics and spirituality have anything to do with one another, don’t worry; you are not alone!
Most people, and most certainly every university economics department on the planet, will think the same: that economics and spirituality are entirely separate realms of human endeavor, with absolutely nothing to say to one another.
I have an alternative view. I believe deeply that economics has much to gain by intertwining itself with spiritual principles and our shared universal values. More directly: that it is urgent for it to do so; economics needs spirituality.
For while I’ll be telling untold tales here, they are not fiction; they are tales from our real world; a world full of both dark and light, in which we’ve unleashed both brilliance and harm.
For when we contemplate our economics, we’re confronted by paradox. Yes, we’ve constructed great cities, amassed enormous wealth, invented fabulous devices, built a world order, launched into space, lifted billions out of poverty and want, sickness and need, and clothed and fed and cared for them.
Yet we’ve also caused enormous damage and dysfunction. We’ve assaulted our planet; raped nature; treated fellow humans as objects or with scorn; permitted the emergence of vast inequalities of opportunity and material endowment.
In other words, our processes of economic creation, are also processes of economic destruction.
There are myriad reasons for the emergence of this paradox, of economic relationships that simultaneously create and destroy.
Here we will focus on a reason that is completely ignored in forums where economics is discussed, and that is: consciousness.
For when we humans engage in acts of creation or destruction, we do so with a corresponding consciousness.
The Neo-classical is a Destructive Way of Thinking about Economics
Our view here at Awakened Economics, is that neo-classical economics, which is the theoretical economics taught in universities world-wide, is a destructive way of thinking about economics.
Put even more bluntly: neoclassical economic consciousness has abetted the unleashing of our two greatest economic challenges: the destruction of nature, and the emergence of vast inequalities of wealth and opportunity.
It has done this by advocating for an economics based on unbridled self-interest, and maximization of pleasure and profit, no matter the consequences; neoclassical economics encourages selfishness over compassion, indifference over empathy, separation over community.
Just as our economic problems are vast, complex, and of our own creation, so too shall the solutions be mosaics of our own free assemblage. Technology; public policy; innovation; research; regulation; entrepreneurship: All of these and more shall play a role in solving our two greatest economic challenges of environmental destruction, and inequality of wealth and opportunity.
In Awakened Economics, we shall explore consciousness as an essential element in the solution.
This blog is thus an attempt to re-imagine what economic theory might look like, if instead of self-interest and maximization of pleasure and profit, we put our purest human nobility at its center.
Over the course of our journey together here, we’ll contemplate wisdom from our shared, timeless sacred texts and spiritual masters; we’ll make forays into the realms of humanistic, transpersonal and positive psychology, Aristotelian philosophy, comparative theology, economic history and even statistical analysis; and we’ll explore the economic implications of humanity’s most cherished universal values such as compassion, community, generosity and temperance, and their potential to revitalize the entire field of economics.
Hopefully we can come to understand why we believe is vital to cast a spiritual eye on economics: Because spirituality draws us towards our highest and best selves and towards that which is universal and connects us all.
So come! Let’s get started with the task at hand: The spiritual awakening of Economic Man
*The proper name for what is commonly called the “Nobel Prize in Economics,” is the “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.” I am not a fan of this prize. It grants economic theory and economics as it has come to be practiced, a legitimacy it does not deserve. Nor is economics a science on par with physics, medicine and chemistry. We’ll dedicate posts to this later on, but for now, we choose to call the prize by its proper name, the “Severiges Riksbank Prize,” not the more awe-inspiring “Nobel Prize in Economics.”
Further reading: Harris L. Friedman, Glenn Hartelius, eds. The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology (West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013)