Economics and Spirituality

[Telos]

I just recently dropped out of studying Business Economics after three years at a Catholic university. Although I have various reasons, one of them is honesty - I see the study of economics as contradictory to the practice of theistic spirituality and, probably, all spirituality in general.

Economics is the study of choice due to scarcity. The discipline is confounded in light of spirituality because with God there is no such thing as scarcity. [Edit: Or, it is not spiritually productive to dwell on scarcity]

Worse, it is confounded also on a purely non-theistic level. People have each other and people are not scarce. This is critical because all people possess the growing capacity of intelligence, creativity, innovation, discovery, ingenuity, and a host of other talents in various forms. These talents drive away scarcity when focused on certain areas, such as science and love. When focused on economics these talents aim to more efficiently allocate resources and lessen the burden of scarcity. But that is a bloated discipline built on the tumorous assumption that scarcity drives choice.

"Scarcity" is often interpreted in the discipline as simply meaning "finite." Since there is a finite amount of people in the world, human resources are supposedly scarce. However, the potential of human capability is not foreseeably finite, therefore it cannot be understood as scarce.

Another questionable bedrock of economic study is the "axiom of consumer insatiability." This states that people will never be satisfied, for people have unlimited wants but only limited ways to satisfy those wants. So, this means that a consumer will tend to spend all of his or her money on goods and services, in order to get as much satisfaction as possible. Indeed, that is what is publicly encouraged through a commercialized society.

But are these assumptions really true?

Whether or not economics is a worthy field of study, it seems directly at odds with both humanist and theistic spirituality. Any thoughts?

[wisp]

Telos,
Economy on a personal level is interwoven in spiritual life. Money(money matters) equates to energy (first in dreams, it becomes physical reality). The way a person thinks and action taken effects the quality of one's waking reality. How this can be done on a bigger scale, I'm always thinking. With your knowledge you can be in the driver's seat of the betterment of society (inserting encouragement ).

Here's my input on the subject:
Trying to connect with what you call scarcity.You disagree with the idea? It would seem that anyone would agree this is a negative mindset.

Anyway, trying to put it in prospective with my life I finally came up with something.

First, I believe as you, anything is available and ready for one at the right time. You may be thinking more about plenty (since you talk of scarcity). It may not be about amounts as much as it's about availabilty vs not available.

Competitive methods don't count with me It's proved profitable but not in the sense most people would see. Much like any success, it is seen differently, so is economic success.

I haven't worked in what society sees (and requires in so many ways) a full time job most my adult life.This is because I didn't have the presence of a supportive other to help with child raising. I had to be bread earner and parent(s). A single parent in other words.   Rejecting society's cruel and unfair divorce and child support I was determined to do it by myself. I considered this as my contribution to society. Not only proving it's possible, but at the same time proving that there is no reason to be a burden on society. Burden is what I connect with scarcity. Provisions are enough.Need is plenty, wanting is something else.

For me, I had a rule of thumb, never go window shopping unless I plan to buy. It's easier than it seems. Who has time to window shop when one works 2-3 days out of the week and must spend at least 5 hours daily in the home doing basic requirements of parenting and housekeeping?

This all worked well for me. The things which have changed in society since I've done this (successfully btw), is appalling. The cost of childcare, healthcare, and housing has skyrocketed. Cost of food has too in most areas, especially in cities. Which came first? Families "wanting" too much, or society's cost adjustment to balance out greed or some other wrong or imbalance?

Needs can't be met (scarcity) until other balance adjustments are made. I can only say this from my own pov, but the problems are within:

1. Child support laws
2. Healthcare policies
3. Business policies requiring or expecting full time employment
4. The "hook" of full time benefit packages
5. Frivolous lawsuits
6. Lack of high expectations from law enforcement and judges.
7. Lack of control or corrections of corrupt local governments.
8. Lack of potential competitive education systems through for instance, school vouchers
9. Housing costs
10.Prevalence of the Insurance industry changing the face of the nation and producing things which shouldn't be, such as out of court maneuvers(imbalance), liability (prompting get rich quick schemes and retalliation through the pocketbook instead of the court systems)

11. Taxation being used as a method of behavior  modification (ex. increase cigarett tax to make it less affordable for teens)
12.  Media brainwashing of the public
13.  The "It takes a village to raise a child" idea,placing parents in a subservient role,and monitored by a less adept collective.
14.  Children growing up in this new society, may or may be effected positively.
15.  So called liberation and equalization of women, but..so many are either dropping the ball,not playing fair,and picking and choosing to live by any rules when it suites them, manipulating the transition (imbalance)

Anyway, I can go on an on.   This is kind of a rough list.

Am I even in the ballpark of what your saying, Telos?  

[Telos]

What a great post! You really have a keen knowledge of the circumstances and the bravery to match.

It may not be about amounts as much as it's about availabilty vs not available.

Physicists are famous for quoting that there is enough energy in a cup of coffee to boil the world oceans. However, that energy is not available to us because we don't know how to convert it efficiently.

You're right. Spirituality, it appears, is the study of making things available - first by making intangible (spiritual) things available, which we use to manifest the physical world. It makes knowledge of self available, confidence in self, reason, creativity, strength, healing, love, and on and on, in order to make a better world.

Economics tries to find predictability in the behavior of people - to predict their choices - so that they can be better manipulated and controlled through government and business. Notice, I did not say that Economics tries to take choice away from people - on the contrary, many economists wholeheartedly believe in ultimate freedom of choice, which attracted me to the discipline in the first place. Problems usually arise when choice is restricted, like in the cases of monopolies and communism.

It's really sick and twisted thinking. Freedom is good, but let's try to predict and control it anyways. Hopefully, we'll evolve to the learn from the mistakes described in your list and learn more salient means of cooperation and growth.

But in the meantime, I can't help but exercise my freedom of choice and abandon the study. There have got to be better ways of making resources available.

[Tom]

The book "The Celestine Prophecy" offers a perspective on energy and spiritual development which might be useful to compare with the study of economics. Economics and spirituality really do not conflict with each other.

[Telos]

he book "The Celestine Prophecy" offers a perspective on energy and spiritual development which might be useful to compare with the study of economics.

If I'm not mistaken, "The Celestine Prophecy" states that humans will be able to consciously direct their evolution when they learn to connect with psychic energy. And that interpersonal conflict prevents connecting with this energy, because interpersonal conflict results from people competing for each other's psychic energy.

In the study of economics, people compete for resources because they are scarce. Sounds to me like The Celestine Prophecy is saying that one should reject the study of spirituality in an economic context. Or, in other words, that economics conflicts with spirituality in the sense that psychic energy is not a scarce resource to compete over.

Edited for spelling

[Tom]

We all know that there is plenty to go around for everyone. So how many people out there on the forums are already living this reality?

[Telos]

FINALLY

Someone in Economics started to incorporate emotions into a study on actual human behavior. They're calling it a "revolution." They're still ignoring the emotional drive for qualia production and focusing too much on the brain, but it's a start.

http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3556121

[karnautrahl]

The celestine prophecy points out the competition for energy and tries to suggest a way out of that loop and to connect to universal energy instead, reducing and stopping in the end any kind of co-dependence effect in relationships.

[sweetbliss]

Someone forwarded me this link.

www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1564147142/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-4351958-6839316#reader-page

It's about a book titled "Compassionate Capitalism: How Corporations Can Make Doing Good an Integral Part of Doing Well", by Marc Benioff

I don't know whether it can help you.

[sweetbliss]

How will spirituality work at individual level? We are Spirit, everything is the Spirit, the entire creation. God created everything out of himself... So what is the matter? Where appearers the difference between spirit and matter? If God is unique, then the matter is an actualization of the spirit. Or an actualization of the spiritual power/energy. This is consistent with modern physics. The difference is then a question of attention.
Maybe the core of economics is the understanding of the management of matter. Maybe there is no purpose as such of economics, maybe this scarcity is only meant to create an empty space, to draw the attention in an experience leading to the recognition of it's source.
I've heard about the the "axiom of consumer insatiability" in a spiritual context. It was said that all our desires are insatiable, the only desire which can be fulfilled is the desire to become the spirit, to get enlightened.   Yea, though this is too often considered as a very hard task, if not impossible. But it makes sense, isn't it? If all other desires are all instruments of those mysterious ways of God? And can economics then understood as the means to set these desires in a connection to the unique, pure desires, which is their core and substratum? Like establishing links between the two realities? Are these ideas too far from real life?  

Our body is also a good. We are the spirit, and our consciousness has to become spirit / our attention has to recognize it's primal source. So we have to raise to the spirit level, but without giving up the matter; to get detached, but holding to the good. Our central nervous system is the playground for this happening, it is matter, bur channelizes the information released by the self.

Anyway, I found this quotation from Einstein, that: "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."

[You]

Your reasoning for dropping out is ridiculous. Those are the current economic theories, and they come from trial and error, they are field tested.

If you believe that they are wrong, come up with a new one to prove them wrong, don't deny them because they don't agree with your theism. If anything, the theism is incorrect.

Which is more real?

[wisp]

sweetbliss,
No offense, but the link you placed seems quite intimidating!!!Look at the front page again. I couldn't go on with it.

Telos,
A great article. It helped me understand how the established economic world is thinking. I'm mulling it around in my head.They sure have their work cut out for themselves. How about a short opinion from you on the article?

Maybe this is a premature statement. They(from the article) don't take into account where the individual is coming from and what the individual motivation is regarding family and such.

[pod_3]

Heard of the Irish pottato famine.? I thought I'd add one of the rotting things to my mulch in a semi-desert area with temperatures rangin from 10-100F and have been unable to eradicate it's spawn for years. I see every little Irish vine against any one of the Emeral Island's walls turning into what looks like a tree, and think what do you mean there was no f###ing food?!

Likewise, my country is awash in green and there is a "mysterious" deficit.

Taking it as a given that there is not one plank of the Communist Manifesto not operating in the globalist ecnomy, we must ask what is the point of consolidating all these countries.

[Telos]

Your reasoning for dropping out is ridiculous. Those are the current economic theories, and they come from trial and error, they are field tested.

No they don't. Modern economic theories arise from statistical measurements and analysis of fluctuating variables of a population. When you "field-test" a theory, either through the Federal Reserve or government action, you're not validating it as statement of truth about the behavior of people. People can do anything they want when they're organized cohesively (Edit: not to mention individuals). Frankly, you know jack about economics as a soft science. Even the members of the profession blush at calling it a science. Try taking upper level college economics courses and get back to me with that statement.

If you believe that they are wrong, come up with a new one to prove them wrong

Way ahead of you. What, you think I'm not serious?

don't deny them because they don't agree with your theism. If anything, the theism is incorrect.

You assume to much. I challenged economic theories based on theistic and non-theistic approaches - and it was a pretty liberal theism, not limited to a personal god, but any spirit of abundance.

Sit down.

[Telos]

Telos,
A great article. It helped me understand how the established economic world is thinking. I'm mulling it around in my head.They sure have their work cut out for themselves. How about a short opinion from you on the article?

Maybe this is a premature statement. They(from the article) don't take into account where the individual is coming from and what the individual motivation is regarding family and such.

I don't think they will ever take those kinds of subjective variables in regard. They will always prefer to look at it in blanket assumption that everyone has the same motivations for their family and other general social groups.

Neuroscience has almost all but completely replaced psychology and psychiatry, the "harder" social sciences. Economics was always closer to philosophy of human nature than the other social sciences. The more I think about it, the more it seems like neuroscience will replace economics in the future, the way it has replaced psychology. Brain studies are already used by the larger marketing firms while testing products. It's only a matter of time.

The question is... will neuroscience eventually replace philosophy and spiritualism? My feelings suggest that breakthroughs regarding a fusion of spirituality and economics will happen before neuroscience gets that close. How it will turn out, I have no clue.

I should say, I'm not against neuroscience at all. However, I am against the unabashed mechanistic approach that textbook neuroscience has taken, spurning the development of needless drugs and ridiculous therapies. Otherwise, I would've been a neuroscientist, if I thought it would actually help people instead of eroding their independence.

[Edit: Here's a recent article from Wired on how the computative left-brained thinking of the information age isn't enough, and how we will enter a new "conceptual age" where right-brained thinking will dominate (but not replace), as empathy, creativity, spirituality, and holistic thinking become more valued.]

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/brain.html

[pod_3]

The laws should be used to calculate the effects of Christian business practices vs. the predictable result from increasing degrees of socialism.

[wisp]

Telos,
Thanks for the "wired" link.

Yes, I think I see a conceptual idea taking hold in this mid size city/town in which I live. Uh oh, bad news happening.

A portion of the affluent community (media and local government, all I am able to see) seems now to have too much time on their hands. The empathy, creativity, spirituality, and holistic appears to be taking hold. The frightening thing is that is heading in a direction similiar to Adolf Hitler's style (Not to focus on any particular person such as A.H., just to give an idea of similarity).

It's something along the lines of cleaning out the undesirables!

Aesthetics of the community appears to be the number one issue right now.

Empathy being played out in usual bleeding heart style, but at the same time, not expressing where the less desirables are to exist.

Creativity is being played out in the old but reliable "charity" fashion.

Spirituality? I'm still looking for that. Hmmm...I suspect it's on the poor side of town, or perhaps on the wrong side of the tracks.  

Holistic thinking? Only in the view of the aforementioned community leaders (collective). Success gone bad!

Not a promising start here.  The facade looks good, though.

[daidaluz]

Hi Wisp

  Spirituality as always is on the poor side of town, be sure about that.  I've been looking for it , and i have Found It around the undesirables; well the main idea I  think is to give chances to those who don't have, giving understanding and some spiritual skills.

   Anyway, genuine spirituality today is a very small movement in town , and as you said, it could turn into a wrong thing because it could affect (along time) economics.  Well in India spirituality a very strong, and economics is so weak that of everybody is poor.

   You have gave me something to think about.

[wisp]

Hi diadaluz,

genuine spirituality today is a very small movement in town

So true everywhere,imo.

And an "undesirable" being one, with work in progress, couldn't you say?

These are exciting movements!

[daidaluz]

I remember that of spirituality is like a seed that being planted in the fields of the wastes can give birth to strong trees that can become a forest and take over any city . ........ Of course it will need some time