Gettin’ Through Hard Times Together IV

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)

A brief overview of the book: The first chapter follows the advice of the House of Justice and seeks to identify the fundamental spiritual principles involved in establishing a context for creating prosperity.  It is titled, Wisdom and Wealth: The Catalyst of Transformation, because both spiritual wisdom and material wealth are needed for humanity to achieve prosperity.  The prerequisite for that achievement, however, is what the House of Justice calls a spiritual revival that works to transform individuals who, in turn, can become the catalyst for changes in the social, political and economic spheres of collective life.  This is social change through spiritual transformation.  To see what would constitute such a spiritual revival the chapter explores a quotation from the Universal House of Justice found in a letter dated November 19, 1974.  There the House of Justice states that people desperately need to know how to live their lives.  Knowing how to do this is actually a product of answering four questions, which the reader will find stated there.  (Reader: Here is the quote from the House of Justice.  In the book, this statement appears in the first chapter, not this introduction.  But I felt blog readers should also know it: “It is not merely material well-being that people need. What they desperately need is to know how to live their lives—they need to know who they are, to what purpose they exist, and how they should act towards one another; and, once they know the answers to these questions they need to be helped to gradually apply these answers to everyday behaviour.  It is to the solution of this basic problem of mankind that the greater part of all our energy and resources should be directed.”  (The Universal House of Justice, Messages from the Universal House of Justice 1963-1986: 283)

 Each chapter thereafter answers one of the four central questions.  This book ends with a statement called Final Thoughts.  (Reader: As my book was going to print another book, With Thine Own Eyes, (George Ronald Press) came to my attention.  Authors, Tomanio, Iverson, and Ring, explore with subtlety and insight the implications of these same questions within a context of investigating spiritual reality.  Though written independently, the two books can easily be viewed as complementary studies.)

Finally, I should point out that, while the following discussion is supported almost entirely by statements from the Bahá’í Writings, this does not mean that I am presenting the “Bahá’í” solution to the economic problem.  I am not.  No official Bahá’í solution to the economic problem exists as yet, beyond certain general statements on ways to bring the material and spiritual dimensions of life into coherence.  An example of such statements is, again, Appendix Two.  This essay is but one Baha’i’s attempt to address the economic problem, an attempt that grew from study of the Bahá’í Writings, yes, but it is not “the” Bahá’í perspective, rather, from first to last it is my own.

I chose this approach because the Bahá’í Writings are the ones I am most familiar with in this field of study.  Other works, such as Martin Nowak’s Super Cooperators  or Robert Axelrod’s Evolution of Cooperation, work similar ground from a scientific perspective.  Too, there is a whole stream of books and articles appearing that explore topics like the relation between happiness and increased productivity, altruism as a drive shaping economic behavior, and the inverse correlation between class and ethical behavior. 

Noteworthy here is the work of Paul Piff and his co-researchers in the study, Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior.  Piff et al. demonstrated a direct and inverse correlation between wealth and increasingly unethical behavior, with behaviors such as selfishness, lying and cheating, more prevalent among the most well-to-do.  They found that the unethical behavior of the rich stems from a strong sense of personal entitlement, which, in turn, is rationalized by self-deceiving validations of their right to possess great wealth fortified by moral justifications for selfishness.  All seems, finally, to be grounded in their more favorable attitudes toward greed, as was brilliantly dramatized, for example, in the movie Wall Street. 

As one moves up the ladder of “success”, the ideology of self-interest becomes more attractive, and dreams of personal accomplishment are increasingly pursued to the detriment of others and to one’s own higher impulses.  Unsurprisingly, then, among the advantaged classes there is a corresponding falling off of feelings of compassion, of community, and of cooperation.  This leads to a cascade of pernicious effects, all ending in the unprecedented levels of economic inequality now present in American society and elsewhere. But the studies also show that higher impulses can often be reawakened and measureable levels of change in values can be detected when the rich are exposed to scenes that evoke compassion and sympathy. That is, through appeals to higher human nature, the destructive ideology of selfish competition can be changed into a constructive life of selfless cooperation. 

This is fascinating and timely scholarship and such works need to be read to round out the whole picture and to put the argument of this essay on a more scientific footing.  But scripture has its place, both as generator of knowledge and motivator of moral behavior, so that any discussion wishing to advance the field of economics can take account of both science and religion, for each sheds valuable light upon the other and on the whole field.