Economic Growth and the lowest common denominator (part 3)

In search of an ecological maturity...

In our fascination with the glimmer of gold and the sparkling optionality tokens that become increasingly abstracted and refined, we have lost our way in the forest of economics.

What was once the “care and upkeep of a home,” (my preferred translation of the Greek word, Οἰκονομικά) has become reduced to an insane life lived entirely within the confines of an imaginary domain known as finance.

Much has been made of GDP measured strictly in units of optionality tokens (yes, money) and like the sorcerer’s apprentice, we have attempted to make our world upon such a measure.

The latter is, perhaps, a double-edged metaphor, as the work of economics has been increasingly rarefied to a limited priest class of wizards indoctrinated into the arcane meanings of the substance. Yet that is truly not IT at all. Even at the most bear translation of the Greek, “the law of the household,” the substance and practice finds its indigenous home, not in the high tower, but in the hands of every member of the family.

If we are lost, what guidance, what light, can lead us back to the path, to untangle this briar of meaningless wealth that burns white-hot in the imagination yet meanwhile serves to starve and poison the world? The forest of economics is, after all, not a bad place to live, in a matter of practical fact this wilderness is our home.

So where to begin… What is the lowest common denominator? Where are the headwaters of care? Deeper than the world itself, where do we all live, what is home?

Awareness.

Awareness, whether we can move, or speak, or see, or feel, awareness is our birthright; and more than that, it is within awareness that we live and make our self, and our relations, and our home. Economics begins before even the threshold of our eyelids, or our fingertips, or our lips.

We can go beyond this, but just for now, just here in our awareness, what might we mean by economic growth?

With awareness as our home, what does it mean, “the law,” or maybe better yet, “the care and upkeep” of our awareness? Let us draw on our friends from the wisdom tradition of Buddhism as a place to begin (though undoubtedly any of the worlds wisdom traditions which live at the root of most if not all of our religions would likely have something useful to offer on the subject.)

When I stop for this moment, letting down the distraction of writing, this page, the music, the feelings in my body, letting all of those things rest in their present and natural condition, and look directly into awareness, what do I see?…

I see context; a boundless, timeless and even dimensionless “expanse.” I see movement; a dance of emptiness and form swirling together. I see content; the sparkling reflective instances of those transformations arising and passing away.

What does it mean to care for, to nurture, to uphold ever more closely the letter of the law of each of these qualities of home?

How much context do I miss moment to moment in my day-to-day life? In a vast expanse of experience how much do I ignore simply out of habit, or of spite or discomfort?

How much of the dynamism do I worry might take away the comfort of myself; can I stand up as one in the face of this endless change?

What of content, do I hunger and grasp for ever more, or do I feel it pouring out of my nature as an endless stream of generosity?

In what ways can I grow in response to these perceived deficiencies in the mind of my awareness?

Where ignorance, I can cultivate wisdom: as dispelling ignorance by gaining insight and understanding through inquiry, experience, study and meditation. Developing discernment.

In the face of fear, I can develop courage: overcoming fear and having the inner strength to do what's right. Facing life's challenges bravely.

Rather than grasping greedily at each object in life’s awareness, I can realize the fundamentally generous nature of my fecund existence: letting go of attachment to imaginary things and endless desire through realizing my self as the very love that pours forth beauty and that cares for others.

All of these are actions of growth in the home field of our awareness. Practicing these, we both create a foundation for, and a source of wisdom towards the realization of a truly integrated economic growth throughout the many faceted fields of our synergistic wellbeing as one, and together, and as one. This Omni-Directional Care Awareness reflects our growing ability to see into the relational flows of love and compassion, and to drive and direct our actions in service to nourishing that.

But what again of GDP? Where are we as humanity, with our awareness filled with polluted oceans, divided populations, marginalized people, plants, animals, and selves?

Might we put our minds to regrowing the economic balance of our species in the world? Might we care for the poor in a better way, might we be more mindful of not tearing real wealth from our hearts, from each other, our neighbors, and the earth and converting it to abstract value which, as has been so eloquently pointed out by children, “you cannot eat money, oh no.”

Obviously, and thankfully, this very sentiment is on the hearts and minds, and in the hands of countless individuals, collectives, and communities worldwide

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, but can we thread our ways together for a wider, deeper, clear and positive impact?

“Alone a youth runs fast, with an elder slow, but together they go far.”

— Luo proverb

Young we are. If you are reading this, there’s a good chance your life has been substantially influenced by some very WEIRD forces. Just as likely so that you are a participating member of a culture, either just a few hundred years old, or at the very least profoundly implicated and involved in the race that youth has put forward.

With garbage patches swirling and micro plastics flowing, rain forests diminishing, and all kinds of global socio-techno-political-environmental tensions brewing, to say that we might ought to go far certainly holds the scent of truth.

With so many lives, both human, and otherwise, at stake and so many old and wise ecosystems on the line, the case is not hard to make that we ought to go quickly as well.

So how to walk the sacred paths of this mystical and majestic wilderness earth that we call home?

We must go together, no doubt. Indeed, wherever we go, we go together, all of humanity, all of the flora and fauna, and even those beings we fail to recognize or acknowledge.

Where then to turn to acknowledge those “elder brothers and elder sisters” with whom we can acknowledge our shared journey?

Drawing again from wisdom traditions, these relations are not far. Mother Earth; Father Sky; Spider Grandmother; and others walk with us, in this realm and beyond. While, like children, we may neglect the importance, or even the validity of some of the structures, if we look carefully, shoulder to shoulder, we discover a much deeper and older truth smiling back in the eyes of our “perhaps more wholesome” indigenous brethren.

Placing gently aside for now the rumors, so foreign to the mainstream mind, of the deathless avatar; it is easy to get distracted with our near senses of age. Of course those folks living deep in the jungle, or far in the bush, or surviving ruggedly in the concentration camp remnants known as reservations, seem to live lives similar to those of us modern citydwellers, at least in terms of length. And yet…

Conservative estimates place the culture and society of the aboriginal peoples of Australia as well beyond 60,000 years in age. If that does not represent a mature culture, I’m not sure which way is up. Without looking more deeply, I can only assume that peoples similarly of the earth around the world must inhabit cultures, if not that old, then certainly much further along in a coherent continuity than those we commonly call “modern.”

One trick of the light that I think we have fallen prey to over the centuries of “modernization” (or perhaps better described as techno fascination), is the idea that we in our cities live alongside “primitive” populations who have yet to learn the wisdom of our way. What could possibly be further from the truth?

The field of adult developmental theory has flourished over the past century, leaving in its wake a trail of increasingly nuanced and sophisticated models for observing, exploring, and nurturing the interior dimensions of human beings. In fact, this emergent phenomenon can be seen to reflect something of the developmental state of our technocratic-consumerist cultures that have so dazzled our eyes for generations.

While the research in the field of A.D. has made efforts to measure cross culturally, it is nonetheless a novel field in the context of even a 10,000-year-old culture which, if we intend to persist through this transformation to globalization, might be a useful frame to take when assessing our own values and utilities. I offer that, while we may have seen much continuity in the constructs brought forward by these models as they may be applied in service to individuals, and even organizations, the data we have assessed and constructed into meaning arise from a narrowband of evolutionary development overall.

This trick of the light has left the field open to criticism and disregard, assaults that cannot easily be brushed aside without resorting to binary and therefore fragile arguments of “real versus not.”

Kim Barta has pointed out with some detail the ways that development in family cultures is recursive in nature with different dynamics arising both in terms of starting points, and progressing through the term of child rearing and the subsequent development of new adults. In a personal conversation, while researching for this article, he also described to me the numerous places in history, and contexts where entire cultures have encountered what he terms “shadow crash;” perhaps most substantial of these, he referred to as the Shadow Crash of the Agrarian Revolution, where humanity split itself from nature, and even men from women into deeply disturbing and disruptive domination hierarchies.

What we can see in this recursive pattern of development, is that each of the “later” territories depend enormously on the constituent nutrients, the nature of, the strengths and weaknesses of, etc., of the foundational stage territories upon which they are built. This invites the consideration that our current mainstream understandings of these patterns of growth within the perspective streams of human beings, and perhaps all living dynamics, is quite nascent in its capacity to discern the colorful myriad expressions that these forms might take.

Given the Clean Slate approach that American modernism took to leaving behind its roots and ancestry (on the European continent and others), and wiping clear the continent of any but the most discrete remnants of deep historic ancestral lines, an approach that has profoundly influenced human processes worldwide in the last 200 years, it seems likely to me that our current understanding of the developmental spectrum, caught up in colors, is quite limited in its capacity to truly describe the full spectrum of light or electromagnetism underlying those emergent phenomenon.

What I mean to infer by this is that it appears to me as though, while the current expression of main force human sociocultural development rests firmly on the fulcrum between a mature third person, achievement oriented perspective, and the early fourth person, integrative perspective, that it is likely to be found that our so-called “Native” brethren, at least in the most unadulterated streams of those cultures, find themselves grounded in an exploration of what we might term “much later” developmental territories in their collective expression.

Simply because these expressions managed to avoid such a severe shadow crash at the otherwise mainstream Agricultural point of diversion, their cultural development has undergone a more coherent contiguous recapitulation with deep and healthy roots all the way down into their most earthly origins. After many thousands, and indeed perhaps after many tens of thousands of years of this recursive cycle of internal cultural reflection and maturation, the later edges of our developmental models, which sparkle so brightly in the “modern” eye, might go easily unnoticed for their apparent (and quite naturally integrated) simplicity.

The importance and value of developmental maturity in our leaders has been well stated. What then might we infer about the incalculable worth of the sociocultural maturity still germinated and living, however enormously assailed, in those scattered human tribes of the world so thoroughly “externalized” by our current rush toward some singularity of consumerist utopia… Or Bust.?

The quote from above, I think, bears repeating…

1. There are a few organizations and initiatives that come to mind that promote a holistic, ecologically-conscious, and socially-aware approach to economics and development:

LeCiel Foundation — This UK-based group has convened recognized elders from 12 representative native wisdom traditions and is working to advance holistic solutions that bring about a more conscious world.

The New Economy Coalition - This alliance of organizations aims to build a new economy centered on justice, sustainability, and democratic governance. Their principles encompass equitable distribution of wealth, deep respect for nature and human rights, and economic institutions designed for broad wellbeing.

The Wellbeing Economy Alliance - A collaboration of governments, organizations, and experts working to transition to an economic system designed to improve human and ecological wellbeing. Their initiatives and research cover topics like sustainable macroeconomic policies, reducing inequality, and measuring national progress with wellbeing indicators.

The Next System Project - An initiative examining models for a "new system" that restructures capitalism by elevating values of justice, democracy, sustainability. Their work covers cooperatives, public banking, green technology, and economic planning centered on environmental and human rights.

The Earth Charter Initiative - A global platform promoting an ethical framework recognizing the interdependence between human rights, peace, environmental preservation, and economic justice. Provides educational resources based on their principles.

I'd recommend browsing through the websites, publications and initiatives of these various organizations. They offer a broad, sophisticated perspective on re-imagining economics, policy, and development in a way that holistically integrates ecological sustainability, human rights, and community wellbeing.