Albert Einstein:
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it”.
By Roland Ashby
As Australia heads towards a federal election on 21 May, I am daily reminded of western culture’s urgent need for a deep wisdom arising out of a contemplative consciousness. During this election campaign, as in previous campaigns, the political discourse has largely been reduced to slogans and sound bites, shaped by advertising/PR agencies and focus groups, and there has been very little discussion of some of the underlying challenges facing Australians, and indeed humanity globally.
The adversarial nature of our political system and media coverage also encourages what theologian Matthew Fox calls “reptilian thinking” – a dualistic “I’m right/you’re wrong, I win/you lose” mindset.
Some of the world’s most distinguished economists have been sounding the alarm about society’s trajectory for some time.
American economist Joseph Stiglitz says that one of the fundamental values our system seems to be undermining is a “sense of fair play”. In commenting on the GFC of 2008 he writes:
A basic sense of values should, for instance, have led to guilt feelings on the part of those who engaged in predatory lending, who provided mortgages to poor people that were ticking time bombs, or who were designing the ‘programs’ that led to excessive charges for overdrafts in the billions of dollars ... something has happened to our sense of values, when the end of making more money justifies the means, which in the US subprime crisis meant exploiting the poorest and least-educated among us.
Much of what has gone on can only be described by the words ‘moral deprivation’. Something wrong happened to the moral compass of so many people working in the financial sector and elsewhere. When the norms of a society change in a way that so many have lost their moral compass, it says something significant about the society.[1]
English economist Kate Raworth laments that humanity’s journey through the twenty-first century will be led by many who are being educated today, because “these citizens of 2050 are being taught an economic mindset that is rooted in the textbooks of 1950, which in turn are rooted in the textbooks of 1850. Given the fast-changing nature of the twenty-first century, this is shaping up to be a disaster.”[2]
It’s commonly assumed that meditation is a form of escapism or a form of religious elitism, with little relevance to the problems and practicalities of everyday life in a modern economy. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Albert Einstein said that “no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it”. A shift to a contemplative consciousness offers us a way out of the ever deepening hole we seem to be digging for ourselves.
One of the great contemplative minds of our age, long-time meditator, and former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, says it is helpful to think of the economy as a household:
A household is somewhere where life is lived in common; and housekeeping is guaranteeing that this common life has some stability about it that allows the members of the household to grow and flourish and act in useful ways. A working household is an environment in which vulnerable people are nurtured and allowed to grow up (children) or wind down (the elderly); it is a background against which active people can go out to labour in various ways to reinforce the security of the household; it is a setting where leisure and creativity can find room ... Good housekeeping seeks common well-being so that all these things can happen ...
‘Housekeeping theory’ is about how we use our intelligence to balance the needs of those involved and to secure trust between them. A theory that wanders too far from these basics is a recipe for damage to the vulnerable, to the regularity and usefulness of labour and to the possibilities human beings have for renewing (and challenging) themselves through leisure and creativity.
This is the kind of damage that manifestly results from an economic climate in which everything reduces to the search for maximized profit and unlimited material growth ...[3]
The great 13th century mystic and theologian Thomas Aquinas also compared the mind to a house, which he said needs to be filled with the contemplation of wisdom:
“The first requirement ... for the contemplation of wisdom is that we should take complete possession of our minds before anything else does, so that we can fill the whole house with the contemplation of wisdom.”[4]
There is much now, thanks to advanced technology, that is very effective at taking possession of our minds, filling us with fears and desires, fostering destructive attachments and compulsions, and creating constant anxiety. I believe it’s also significant that we predominantly refer to ourselves as “consumers” rather than citizens.
Meditation is a way to restore balance, perspective and equanimity, and most importantly, nurture the awareness, love and compassion that humanity craves.
The world is going through a dark night. Psychiatrist Gerald May says that for 16th century Spanish mystic St John of the Cross, “the dark night of the soul” was a time for the purging of destructive attachments and compulsions, so that we can be liberated to receive and give love more freely and fully, and to see love at the heart of existence.[5]
I fear that unless our civilisation learns to let go of its “destructive attachments and compulsions” and hold fast to such a love, then the world will only become a harsher and more brutal place for the great majority of human beings, and indeed, for all creatures.
[1] Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality (Allen Lane, Penguin Books, 2012) xvii
[2] Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics – Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist (Penguin Random House, 2017) 8
[3] Rowan Williams, Faith in the Public Square (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012) 227
[4] As cited in Christian Mystics – 365 readings and meditations, by Matthew Fox (New World Library) Day 112
[5] Gerald G. May, The Dark Night of the Soul – A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth (HarperCollins, 2004) 4-6