Founding a Compassion Based Economy
Or how growth and capitalism are not wrong
Introduction
Four years ago, I laid out my vision for the next chapter of my life in the Smart Insight Revolution, calling for a shift in our economy to reward ‘positive’ activities. While I had little understanding of what ‘positive’ truly meant, I had identified a need to rebalance human activities with nature and embarked on collaborations with like-minded people to leverage a generation of new ‘positive’ impact projects. But how could I be inclusive of contrarian ideas by solely surrounding myself with like-minded people? How could I escape my tunnel vision and grasp the complexities of the world without antagonists?
Four years later, working with some of the largest companies, private investors, governments, and entrepreneurs in the world, it has become increasingly clear that the scale of the issues we are facing is greater than ever before. We are approaching a point of criticality - according to the Doomsday Clock we have never been closer to midnight ; re-evaluating our current models and developing local solutions without taking into account a global context and our role as citizens isn’t sufficient. A path toward remedy is not just about masking symptoms - a path towards remedy requires a deep understanding of the root causes that exacerbate the very problems I presented four years ago.
So, what are these root causes, and what should we do about them?
Human Activities and Planet Earth
The Anthropocene
With an accumulation of evidence showing the impact of human activities on our ecosystems, the scientific community agrees that we are transitioning into the Anthropocene, a new geological period in which humans are the dominant driver of change to the earth’s system for which key indicators have been identified outlining the great acceleration. Whereas the different ecosystems (composed of Biotic and Abiotic factors) were seemingly in equilibrium for thousands of years, the Anthropocene presents a shift towards human dominance over the course of nature.
The work on planet boundaries by the Stockholm Resilience Center also presents the case that we are approaching singularity points in several dimensions, on the brink of unleashing complete divergence with unmanageable repercussions as well illustrated recently by the report Global Tipping Points. As technology accelerates, we seem to fall into what Gunther Anders names the ‘Promothean Discrepancy’: an ever-increasing a-synchronicity between man and the world he has produced.
‘We Are Inverted Utopians’: The basic dilemma of our age is that ‘we are smaller than ourselves’, incapable of mentally realizing the realities which we ourselves have produced. Therefore we might call ourselves ‘inverted Utopians’: while ordinary Utopians are unable to actually produce what they are able to visualize, we are unable to visualize what we are actually producing. (Günther Anders, “Theses for the Atomic Age”, Massachusetts Review, Spring 1962: 496)
Singularity is a mathematical reference to the point at which an equation, surface, etc., blows up or becomes degenerate, a concept that entered popular culture amidst the concern that machines could come to be smarter than humans, take a look at the recent AI Anxiety raising. We are faced with several of these singularity points, each indicating a deeper emergence into the Anthropocene. From a global water crisis and diminishing phosphorus levels to the eradication of our bee populations and the loss of raw materials, is it time to become a multi-planetary species?
Ecology
The science of studying the connections between the different ecosystems and the impact of human activities on those ecosystems, or ecology, is fairly recent. It’s only in 1962 that Rachel Carson summarized clearly:
“The history of life on Earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings. To a large extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth's vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the environment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life actually modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species man acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.”
Rachel Carson, "Silent Spring"
Ecology presented a shift in a new direction: previously there had been no substantial analysis of how the exploitative nature of human activities towards the natural world might affect existence on earth in the long term. Prior to an ecology understanding of systemic ecosystems, Darwinism and the “survival of the fittest” as a selective force ruled the collective perception over a period of more than 250 years.
Sustainability
Ten years later, in 1972, an international coalition called “the Club of Rome” published the Limits of Growth outlining the novel idea that we cannot continue to exploit natural resources without facing harsh consequences, and in 1987, the United Nations Brundtland Commission defined Sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
This definition of sustainability is to be analyzed as well in the context of humanity collectively thinking about collective human rights. There is a growing consciousness that we are one single species on one single planet.
Clearly, we are aware of the problems, but why do they exist?
How did we get here?
In order to understand what’s driving these irrational behaviors, it is necessary to look at how we function. Philosophers identified early our fundamental needs for growth (as defined by Spinoza) co-existing with the drive to have our subsistence needs met.
We are indeed driven by conscious and unconscious needs, both as individuals and in communities. These needs have been studied for centuries, and with recent advancements in neuroscience, we are now able to pinpoint unconscious drivers, shedding new light on human behaviors.
Unconscious and Conscious Drivers
Our unconscious drivers are linked to a specific area of the brain; the striatum. Developed in an epoch of hostile environments typical of man’s existence over 100,000 years ago, it is designed as a means of survival, triggering our dopamine and serotonin reward system to activate specific decision-making points.
Additionally, conscious and rationalized barriers from our frontal cortex (memory, emotions, impulse control, problem-solving, social interaction, and motor function) inhibit the parts of our brain responsible for higher empathy and altruism.
These drivers and barriers, with all their indirect socialization and normative aspects, have impacted human actions since prehistoric times. Studies in this area point to the possibility of dopamine playing a key role in spurring on Homo Sapiens’ upward evolution from our other fellow primates. We learned to tame these instincts with a complex network of cultural and societal norms that encouraged strong values and principles in individual and collective behaviors.
Where this no longer serves us is that most of these drivers or barriers are set to being triggered at intensities disproportionate to our current needs and we need to study why and what to do about it. In most of our Western modern-day societies, there is no longer any need for the survival requirements of our predecessors.
It is interesting to draw a parallel between the collapse of spiritual practices (especially in Europe and the US) and the impact of such practices on regulating our dopamine and serotonin
Paired with this is the phasing out of the spiritual guidance structures in our communities which previously exerted a subduing influence on these intense instinctual remnants.
Fundamental and Existential Needs
As explained by Sebastien Bohler in his book, our striatum releases dopamine, a hormone associated with pleasure and happiness, satisfying 5 fundamental needs:
Sustenance/food: we produce enough food to feed 10 billion people but at the same time agriculture is the source of 25% of all CO2 emissions. There is a far higher global mortality rate for obesity than malnutrition in the developed economies while 690 million people are hungry today. Malnutrition is both referring to lack of access to food or mal-adapted food diets that seem to plague essentially the poor.
Reproduction: porn videos and dating websites on the Internet represent a large portion of the overall traffic, with searches for ‘porn’ now close to 500 million per month and rising worldwide.
Status and social significance: motor vehicles, luxury products, and fashion industries continue to enjoy massive economic growth. The social media effect sees META’s market capitalisation currently at twice South Africa’s GDP
Minimizing effort: automation, entertainment, travel, and experiences are all tailored to ensure our bodies and brains save energy which appeal to our biological design.
Sourcing information: billboards, media, messaging, notifications, social media etc… explain why the Infinite Scroll feature is so important
The release of dopamine happens unconsciously and is connected to our needs for security and pleasure, that we can call human essential needs - that we propose to study and define in a subsequent article.
Dopamine is also released when we engage in activities linked to altruism (study 1, study 2) and contributing to others…could it be considered as a human essential need?
Perhaps our brain is programmed to fulfill our human existential needs and help us flourish at the same time. It’s worth noting that recent literature on the topics of our ways of thinking or how we can be influenced references two separate thinking systems: One that is triggered almost automatically (System 1) and one that motivates us to think and requires energy (System 2).
Dopamine, Capitalism, and Consumerism
Could we link our dopamine release to consumerism that has led to the increasing separation from our essential environment:
"Values represent the quintessence of human wisdom acquired over centuries. And in the new system that's developing, they must embody the fundamental principles for sustainable accomplishment, whether individual or social. These must be even more than the inspiring ideals that supply the energy needed to fulfill human aspirations. Values are a form of knowledge and a powerful determinant of human evolution. They are psychological skills that have profound practical importance. Education must be founded on values that promote sustainability and general well-being for all. A move toward inculcating sustainable values would amount to a paradigm change in our current society's value system. It would consider as its aim the greater well-being of both humans and the natural systems on which they depend, rather than a valuation for more production and consumption. Conscious emphasis will be placed on values that are truly universal, as well as on respect for cultural differences. At the grass-roots level, the movement towards sustainability can build on deep local values. Values can create transformational leadership, leadership in thought that leads to action." (p. 198)
It means that what is driving us toward those singularity points can be explained by
● Our needs to grow translates into an economy whose growth is founded on consumer consumption, levering our unconscious drivers to create a world that becomes ever more globalized, escalating its extraction of natural resources
● A population that has been growing at an exponential rate for the past twenty centuries.
Studies point to the ways in which our brains resist a state of plateau and crave dopamine. This drives us to chase the ‘more’, giving rise to the multitude of industries founded on a system of feeding this pattern and that continue to grow at an exponential rate. If the trajectory as it is, is left unchecked it is inevitable that we will reach and exceed planetary capacity.
“Why?”, you may ask…
The simple reason being that to maintain and organize our industries that deliver dopamine we need energy; the link between electricity consumption and GDP Growth is indisputable.
In short, human beings need security and growth and they are satisfying these needs via an economy based on capitalist-consumer ethics that is plugged into and activates most of our unconscious drivers.
The problem lies in the fact that we are living on a planet with exhaustible resources and finite boundaries. Pushing beyond these boundaries will essentially lead to singularities...creating conditions of global upheaval.
SO NOW WHAT
Striving for shifts:- from subsistence to superlative
There is much uncertainty and debate around how to reduce our addiction to human existential needs while still satisfying them and in addition, enhance the human growth drivers to secure a flourishing life on Earth while simultaneously regulating the effects of our human presence on Earth to remain within acceptable parameters of planetary limits. Mastering how to mind our activities within these planetary boundaries poses formidable challenges —technically, culturally, ethically, economically and politically — paired with this undertaking will be navigating the application of the necessary normative and institutional drivers.
A global economy fueled by over-consumption that largely acts on our human existential needs drivers points to being the key area to address and the organizations responsible for this economy are businesses.
It is true that these normative judgments require regulation, with governments to draft and enforce this and in so doing, to promote and accelerate positive impacts. At the same time, it is irrefutable that human organizations today are majorly represented by businesses of all sizes that measure their performances and successes with OUTPUTS and financial KPIs: revenue, profit, EBITDA. Businesses trying to value OUTCOMES over outputs are less able to compete due to financial success linked to OUTPUTS KPIs.
The main problem is that the majority of the largest companies operating in the global economy are leveraging the performance of those outputs on human existential needs reward systems triggered by: eating; reproduction; status and social standing; information sourcing and minimizing physical effort/energy savings. These materialism-based values stand in relative conflict with encouraging human flourishing and our evolving in the direction of what we’re striving for and need.
“We cannot escape the principles of life.We are not separated from the nature that is giving us breath and food, and we cannot destroy the natural conditions that gives and
sustain life without dying in the process.”
The businesses that favor human growth and ultimately, a communal sense of wellness/wellbeing remain marginal and are as yet not sufficiently valued on their outcomes, nor levering enough on (imperfect) present mechanisms of capital allocation, meaning that they fail to scale to optimum levels or achieve a wide enough reach.
Compassion and Civilization
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
In their updated work, the Club of Rome have detailed potential paths towards solutions. The proposed avenues include collaboration, collective leadership, global governance, structuring educational values focused on sustainability and developing a systemic way of thinking while recognizing the central role of innovators:
Only innovators, however—by perceiving the need for new information, rules, and goals, communicating about them, and trying them out—can make the changes that transform systems. This important point is expressed clearly in a quote that is widely attributed to Margaret Mead, “Never deny the power of a small group of committed individuals to change the world. Indeed that is the only thing that ever has.”
– Limits to growth - 30 years update - p191
To avoid creating catastrophic singularities, we need to encourage human beings in cultivating the second category of needs (human flourishing) through knowledge, culture, arts, and envisioning their present wellbeing along with their future, based in a sense of positivity and meaning. In addition, to stimulate altruism, empathy and benevolence - all natural behavioral pillars and integral to our being, yet which are totally subjugated by our consumerist lifestyle.
A student once asked anthropologist Margaret Mead, “What is the earliest sign of civilization?” The student expected her to say a clay pot, a grinding stone, or maybe a weapon.
Margaret Mead thought for a moment, then she said, “A healed femur.”
A femur is the longest bone in the body, linking hip to knee. In societies without the benefits of modern medicine, it takes about six weeks of rest for a fractured femur to heal. A healed femur shows that someone cared for the injured person, did their hunting and gathering, stayed with them, and offered physical protection and human companionship until the injury could mend.
Mead explained that where the law of the jungle—the survival of the fittest—rules, no healed femurs are found. The first sign of civilization is compassion, seen in a healed femur.
Ira Byock
Can we bring compassion within the economy to help us and future human beings flourish? This is the work that we intend to pursue and document in that coming newsletter. Let’s build a compassion based economy, demonstrate it is doable and understand what its pillars are.