Gettin’ Through Hard Times Together Part III

The fundamentals of the whole economic condition are divine in nature and are associated with the world of the heart and spirit. This is fully explained in the Baha'i teaching, and without knowledge of its principles no improvement in the economic state can be realized…When the love of God is established, everything else will be realized. This is the true foundation of all economics.

(‘Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace: 238)

In this book I mean economics in its Aristotelian sense of “household” relations between family members.  But I mean these relations, which I name the moral economy, to refer to exchanges of values that spiritually bind together the members of the family of man: the household of humanity.  These are the actions that you and I can do for each other when we meet on the street or at work, or get together in our homes, parks, malls, and neighborhoods.  As the material economy generates more material wealth, so the moral economy increases society’s moral wealth, which I call riches.

The moral economy appears and comes into view at this interpersonal level that operates in-between the individual and the institutional.  As I see it, it works through three core principles: sharing, service, and self-sacrifice.  That is, individuals sharing their material wealth, serving others, and sacrificing their personal interests for a common or collective good.  Now, all economies have a moral dimension to them.  But the moral economy of any materialist society is built on values opposed to the moral economy of this essay.  The moral economy of materialism, especially its modern consumerist form, is composed of values and principles that promote actions and attitudes that are selfish, self-serving and self-centered.  This is supposed to generate wealth, security and well-being, and for a time it does, but over time it does just the opposite.  If one wants wealth, security, and well-being one must follow the principle of Jesus: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” (The Book of Matthew 16:25)

To build a real moral economy means, then, to return to our sacred origins, not historically but essentially, not to the past but to the roots of our being, for the moral economy is part of a larger economy, what Shoghi Effendi called the Divine Economy, “that social code”, (The World Order of Baha'u'llah: 60) which is human collective relations mediated and enhanced through institutions and laws that regulate the global household on divine principles, a relationship captured in the Christian prayer, “on earth as it is in heaven”.  Exploring the nature and structure of that Divine Economy is another work.  (A concise but comprehensive outline of the workings of such a system was given by ‘Abdu’l-Baha early last century.  It can be found as Appendix One at the end of the book.)

In a rapidly globalizing world, a true moral economy can only be founded upon the principle and ideal of the oneness of humanity, and the moral virtues of economic life must express, support and reinforce that ideal. The oneness of humanity appears and operates within economic life when sharing spirit, not material gain, is the goal of human exchange, though, again, a proper material gain for everyone involved is needed.  The moral economy works best when we spend material wealth for the common good, along with our inner spiritual riches, such as love, trust, and justice, which are as the different denominations of a spiritual currency.  What are primarily exchanged through currency and labor in the material economy are goods and services. What is primarily exchanged through values in the moral economy is our noble humanity.  In the first each values his personal profit, in the second each values the other.

Being victims of an improper education we must ask: What is a proper one?  It cannot be simply a matter of wringing new information from an old and dry paradigm of understanding of human nature and the world.  One comprehensive model of a proper education is found in my book, Renewing the Sacred, and the statements on education woven throughout this essay are in a very real sense supplemental to Renewing the Sacred.  This education is, at this point, idealistic of course, but short-sighted pragmatism, whether as educational philosophy or philosophy of action and purpose, has failed to inspire and give any clear direction.  It merely careens from one crisis to the next with no vision of how to develop human society let alone stabilize itself.

There is another kind of practicality.  ‘Abdu’l-Baha was once rightly praised for walking the mystical path with practical feet.  For the practical-minded, the following pages may seem an example of walking the practical path with mystical feet.  But this higher path of practicality is not a Neverland of impossibly rosy wishes and Peter Pan happy thoughts.  Just because something is not practiced does not necessarily mean it is not practical.  Regarding the other practicality, the Universal House of Justice wrote:  “There are spiritual principles, or what some call human values, by which solutions can be found for every social problem. Any well-intentioned group can in a general sense devise practical solutions to its problems, but good intentions and practical knowledge are usually not enough. The essential merit of spiritual principle is that it not only presents a perspective which harmonizes with that which is immanent in human nature, it also induces an attitude, a dynamic, a will, an aspiration, which facilitate the discovery and implementation of practical measures. Leaders of governments and all in authority would be well served in their efforts to solve problems if they would first seek to identify the principles involved and then be guided by them.” (Universal House of Justice, The Promise World Peace: 3)

Gettin’ Through Hard Times Together Part II

The fundamentals of the whole economic condition are divine in nature and are associated with the world of the heart and spirit. This is fully explained in the Baha'i teaching, and without knowledge of its principles no improvement in the economic state can be realized…When the love of God is established, everything else will be realized. This is the true foundation of all economics.

(‘Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace: 238)

This book is not concerned in any way with overhauling the political machinery of state, or shoring up the weakened institutions of civil society, or with fixing the structural inequalities of opportunity in the economy.  It advocates no political action, puts forth no social platforms, and suggests no economic policies for creating jobs or innovations in either the relations of production or the institutional distribution of wealth.  Neither is it yet another manifesto of artistic and cultural renewal, nor an anxious call to return to the foundations of any religious tradition.

The view presented is that of ideal education for an ideal community.  It is a vision of people creating prosperity, using spiritual virtues as currency.  Hence there are no personal investment strategies and not even a side glance at topics like individual financial planning.  Neither will the reader find stock market tips or the steps to be a millionaire by saving $10.00 a day.  It is concerned only with the spiritual state of human beings, both individual and in small groups, and with identifying the advance guard of a new community.  The people in this vision do not yet exist in any significant numbers, though their numbers increase daily.  But the vision includes every human being on the planet.  It is a vision of our true selves acting in real ways, though this may not be recognized by many. 

That’s because, economically, applying a vision of real humanity focuses not on economics, but, rather, on a larger idea, prosperity.  Modern economics is those principles and practices that have to do with producing, distributing and consuming material wealth, goods and services.  The more of these one has, consumes or produces, the richer one supposedly is.  Yet even the colossally affluent among us vaguely sense that something is really wrong with that equation.  Prosperity includes material plenty, of course.  Without plenty, prosperity is a pipe-dream of impracticality.  Prosperity is based on the shared sense of spiritual well-being and connection that flows from belonging to a community of mutual care.  True prosperity will never be achieved by setting our sights solely upon gaining ever more material wealth, for reasons that will become clear.  Hence, though wealth obviously plays an essential role in achieving prosperity, I believe that it is human and moral relations of care that are the key to prosperity and that point the way out of our malaise.

In this sense, the essay is a throwback.  Prior to our modern materialist mania—i.e. from Aristotle till about the sixteenth century when the Catholic Church lost its moral hold on European society and that ethical transformation toward unbridled self-interest described first by Max Weber in his classic, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, took hold—economics in the “west” was the moral relations of individuals in the household, and the public household operated upon similar moral principles and relations, or at least pretended to, under the name moral philosophy.  Modern economics became a subject of scientific and statistical inquiry when it separated from both the actual household and from abstract moral philosophy.  And prior to Aristotle’s discussion was what Mircea Eliade calls “the economy of the sacred,” the human communal connection with divinity.  For archaic man the natural and human worlds were not separate from the sacred, transcendent world.  The first was its physical embodiment, the second its cultural manifestation, the arena where natural ecology was turned into human economy.

The early economy of the sacred was the rites associated with women and fertility and men and virility, with sky gods and earth goddesses uniting.  Later notions were cast in the language of the effulgence of life, of divine overflow, of the gifts of God, the abundance of the divine storehouse, with bounty and fecundity: indeed, with images and metaphors of wealth and well-being of all kinds.  The whole multi-millennial movement from Earth Mother to Heavenly Father, and then from divine Personality to abstract Principle, shows, even now, the vestiges of this human relation with the Divine, the relation being the receiving of abundance when living in accordance with our proper nature.

Put in modern conceptual terms, these earlier formulations saw the material economy, so vaunted in the modern world, as comprising the set of material relations embedded within and reflecting a larger system of human moral relations which were, in turn, expressions of a complex social relation with the sacred: this last kept everything grounded in a higher moral and communal purpose.  We have lost any real sense of the sacred and in so doing have lost belief in ourselves, leaving only things and our relations with them.  

Gettin’ Through Hard Times Together

(This post and the next few posts that follow will present the Introduction to my new book, Gettin' Through Hard Times Together: Creating Prosperity Through Sharing, Service and Sacrifice)

The fundamentals of the whole economic condition are divine in nature and are associated with the world of the heart and spirit. This is fully explained in the Baha'i teaching, and without knowledge of its principles no improvement in the economic state can be realized…When the love of God is established, everything else will be realized. This is the true foundation of all economics.

(‘Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace: 238)

We live in a time of chaos and confusion, despair and degradation, and people everywhere search desperately for a way out of a darkening horizon.  Of course, this is not new in any absolute sense.  People have lived through numerous such times.  What is new is that upheaval is everywhere.  Humanity itself is threatened.  We are not just experiencing cultural exhaustion, massive civil unrest, or yet another crisis of government or economy, depending upon what land or people one is observing.  We are not just at the end of an era or even an age, but of an entire order of human life and thought.

A new way of looking at our selves and the world is necessary; a new light is required to shine within human beings that enables us to see and formulate new answers—perhaps even new kinds of answers—to urgent questions that cannot be answered in the usual way. 

Changing our view of human nature changes our understanding of everything else.  This internal paradigm-shift is difficult for many reasons, chief of which is, in my view, the misinformation we receive about ourselves.  We are victims of what Bahá’u’lláh calls “lack of a proper education”. (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 161)  There is always a connection between social crisis and new moral possibility.   Yet full response-ability cannot be achieved when one suffers under the burden of a puny form of belief in oneself or in higher and greater spiritual powers.   Because of an improper education, we believe our humanity is something less, much less, than it really is.  We say things like “We are only human”, because we want to rationalize or excuse a sorry piece of thought or stupid bit of behavior.  But we also say it because we don’t know or no longer remember that a human being is the most powerful, wonderful, and noble creature in the cosmos.  We can’t hear our inner voices, put no faith in our imagination, are no longer fired by the sacred longings of the human spirit.  We are without vision, and are left with only dreams. 

Solving our most intractable problems starts, I feel, with a new vision of humanity. The Book of Proverbs puts this truth well:  “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” (The Holy Bible, The Book of Proverbs 29:18)  Vision, then, is at least as important as bread, but fear and wrong conditioning delays understanding of this truth.  No doubt vision without the means to implement it is just fine words and wonderful pictures.  Too great a gap between possibility and “reality” often ends in frustration and despair.  But, too, means without vision are destined for only short-sighted pragmatic goals.  A great vision fires the imagination which taps the energies of motivation which, in turn, generates the means to execute the vision.  This means a transfer of energy from pragmatic to idealistic purposes.  Where to find such a vision?  I find it in the Bahá’í Teachings.  The Universal House of Justice writes that the guidance that the Bahá’í teachings offer “does not comprise a series of specific answers to current problems, but rather the illumination of an entirely new way of life.  Without this way of life the problems are insoluble; with it they will either not arise or, if they arise, can be resolved.” (The Universal House of Justice, message dated July 21, 1968 to a National Spiritual Assembly.