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Nightly View: The march to spiritual marketization

April 21, 2012 at 10:00 pm by Leave a Comment

Owl

By Joe Perez

High in the heavens above, the Sun’s sweet sextile with Neptune suggests a universe hospitable to fantasy and the belief that anything is possible. It’s time to inaugurate a new crazy idea: a nightly column on Spirit’s Next Move which follows the hooting of the owls, listening for wisdom, however disjointed and scattered the whos and hoos and hoots may sound, amid the many boughs and branches of the World Wide Web.

Resplendent hues of Sol’s gold and Neptune’s briny green above; on Earth, hues of pastel pink and baby blue. Ever wonder if the preference of pink for girls and blue for boys is universal? Not even close. It appears to be a cultural choice that could easily have gone the other way.

The marketization of color

The Smithsonian writes:

The march toward gender-specific clothes was neither linear nor rapid. Pink and blue arrived, along with other pastels, as colors for babies in the mid-19th century, yet the two colors were not promoted as gender signifiers until just before World War I—and even then, it took time for popular culture to sort things out.

For example, a June 1918 article from the trade publication Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” Other sources said blue was flattering for blonds, pink for brunettes; or blue was for blue-eyed babies, pink for brown-eyed babies, according to Paoletti.

In 1927, Time magazine printed a chart showing sex-appropriate colors for girls and boys according to leading U.S. stores. In Boston, Filene’s told parents to dress boys in pink. So did Best & Co. in New York City, Halle’s in Cleveland and Marshall Field in Chicago.

Today’s color dictate wasn’t established until the 1940s, as a result of Americans’ preferences as interpreted by manufacturers and retailers. “It could have gone the other way,” Paoletti says.

Today, American retailers are doing more than picking the color palettes to sell to young children, they may also be establishing the limits on democracy.

The marketization of everyday life

According to an article by Harvard’s Michael Sandel at The Huffington Post:

At a time of rising inequality, the marketization of everything means that people of affluence and people of modest means lead increasingly separate lives. We live and work and shop and play in different places. Our children go to different schools. You might call it the skyboxification of American life. It’s not good for democracy, nor is it a satisfying way to live.

Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share in a common life. What matters is that people of different backgrounds and social positions encounter one another, and bump up against one another, in the course of everyday life. For this is how we learn to negotiate and abide our differences, and how we come to care for the common good.

And so, the question of markets is really a question about how we want to live together. Do we want a society where everything is up for sale? Or are there certain moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?

Is it really so that the marketization of everything leads to greater class stratification? Will Wilkinson, criticizing Michael Sandel on Big Think, doesn’t think so. But Sandel may be correct, it seems to me. Money buys many things, including the ability to live one’s life without other people around. Having no money, you don’t have that option.

And so on this inaugural expedition of The Daily Hoot, I invite us into a dream-like visualization:

First, everything in the world is “fully marketized,” as Michael Sandel fears, (let that term stir up whatever it does for you). The markets define the conditions of our citizenship and common life together. Almost everything is up for sale. 

One definition of “marketization” is simply “The exposure of an industry or service to market forces.” At a minimum, everything is registered by the market, located within its own value coordinates.

BUT… Dystopia is not the world we find. Instead, we find a Utopian world in which people of all means share a common life and care deeply about their history as a species and as a people, and how they came to live together in peace. Market forces helped to create the delicate balance, because they evolved from the rudimentary capitalist measurements we use today into instruments capable of transferring all measure of value — aesthetic, moral, and spiritual. 

Can we imagine that? Remember that the process towards gender-specific clothes was neither linear nor rapid. The process towards a sort of spiritual and aesthetic marketization will not happen overnight, if it happens at all.

It happens not in the skies but in the choices we make, starting with the choice to let our soul slumber a slave to industry and capital forces or to awaken as a Unique Self alive with the creative power of the stars. It happens in the choice to heed the call of Utopia rather than succumb to fears of Dystopia.

Filed Under: Arts & Culture, Belief & Practice, Learning & Work, Love, Sex & Ethics, World Politics Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Five stages of business and the emergence of the Unique Business

April 20, 2012 at 12:15 pm by Leave a Comment

Business Group

By Marc Gafni

There is a parallel between the emergence of business and the emergence of self is both fascinating and highly instructive in understanding the narrative of conscious capitalism. Both the evolution of self and the evolution of business go through five core stages, which in large measure parallel each other. These five stages unfold in the historical emergence of the self and business even as they may also unfold in the life of the individual person or business. This highly conceptual account is necessarily quite simplified. Nevertheless, this framework is offered as a way of looking at conscious capitalism that adds to the discussion.

Level One:

At the first level, both the self and business begin in what we might call a pre–personal stage. At this stage, both form their identity in relation to the large context that holds them. In the pre-modern period, the idea of an independent business which served it’s own prosperity did not exist. Nor was there a notion of self as a self-justifying unit. For example the king (or queen) or the church formed the corporation in the Middle Ages. The corporation served the interests of the king and church. It did not have independent capital or will. Rather, it was defined in relationship to state or church. The individual was in the same situation. He was a subject of the king and vassal of the church.

The word self did not yet exist in the dictionary. A person’s definition was first and primarily as a loyal subject of king or obedient adherent of the church. The profits of the corporation enriched the king’s coffers. The king and state had the arbitrary right to seize the wealth of the corporation. New initiatives were capitalized by church and not by the investment banking firms. The modern notion of private capital did not yet exist. In the same vein, the assets and even the life of the individual are owned by the king (or queen). The subject is actually obligated to give up their life for church and crown.

Level Two:

At Level Two both the self and business emerge from the shadow of king and church and evolve into their own independent identity. Self emerges from the pre-personal to the personal stage. As the Renaissance dawns on Europe, the word ‘self’ appears in the dictionary. The separate independent self has emerged as a self- justifying unit. Self fulfillment begins to makes sense as a term. The self seeks to fulfill not the will of the crown or the dictates of the religion, but rather to fulfill itself. In the Renaissance and in the Romantic Movement that follows it, the rule-based Neo-Classicism of church and monarchy are replaced by intoxication with the individual. The individual’s destiny, journey and life become self-evidently valuable in the eyes of society and of the individual himself.

At the same time, business emerges as a self-justifying activity, which seeks its own fulfillment. As the post-Renaissance and Romantic writers are extolling the virtues of the independent individual guided by his own voice, Adam Smith is writing about the invisible hand of the market which self-regulates and guides the market place towards its own fulfillment. The corporation’s charter is no longer to profit the Crown or Church. The corporation serves itself, which is constituted by its owners or shareholders. The healthy corporation serves the financial interest of the shareholders. The healthy ego of the self serves the productivity and happiness of the individual self. The self –interest of the individual is to promote the survival and flourishing of the individual. The independent separate self and the independent separate business have emerged and their creative force is unleashed in the world.

Level Three:

At the third level, shadow elements of the individual and business emerge and give legitimate cause for concern. The self of the individual person and the individual business show signs of pathology. Instead of realizing the healthy differentiation with the larger defining environments of Church and King, self and business begin to disassociate from the their larger contexts. Self begins to slide into a selfish obsession with self. Healthy self-interest becomes narcissistic as the person fixates at an ego-centric stage of development and is only able to feel genuine empathy for himself or those necessary for his survival or flourishing. All others become objects to his subjects. He sees the others as a means to his end. Filling the ego’s greed becomes the primary human need. The individual begins to worship at the altar of his own self-gratification, and the things that gratify him are only the ego enhancers, which support the reification of the individual.

A similar process takes place in business. The healthy business becomes greedy. The robbers barons of the American expansion become the new archetype of business. Corporate greed emerges as a motive force in the public sector. Along with this, the narrative of the ‘evil corporation’ is born, which indicts the idea of business itself. Both the individual and business begin to be defined in terms of their shadow. Both are seen as only serving the financial enrichment of shareholders or separate self. Both are seen as being willing to oppress and exploit other for the sake of self. The selfish individual and the selfish business become fixed givens in the mental furniture and life worlds of modernity.

Level Four:

At level four various strategies are developed to deconstruct the ego of the individual person and the individual business. As a result of the excesses of both produced by greed as described above, the self validating person and business are demonized as the sources of personal and social evil. Theories are introduced, old and new, which support the complete undermining of the personal self and shareholder driven business.

Two well-known phenomena which give example to this level, but which is rarely seen from this vantage would be socialism and classical enlightenment. Both demonize the self, of business and the person, as being lost in a dangerous delusion of separation and independence. The independent business is said ignores the larger context of stakeholders in its actions and moves only to satisfy it’s own most pressing needs for gratification. The separate self becomes lost in the grasping of the ego for transitory fulfillment. It seeks to fill the shallowest needs for power and status, which are disconnected from genuine realization or achievement. Classical enlightenment sees liberation from the suffering inflicted by the go in the realization of no self. No- Self in most enlightenment teaching is the new consciousness of reality which involves the letting go of the illusion of being a separate self and realizing that one is an inextricable part of the whole. In no self you realize that you are not separate, either from god, nature, or any of the larger contexts of society. This is the movement from what we have called separate self to what we will now term True Self. The total number of true selves in the world is One. This is a clear movement beyond the limited experience of separate self into a larger field of consciousness in which the separate self is effectively deconstructed.

In a different expression of this same movement religions and governments enact rigorous regulations, which serve to at least curtail the greedy excesses of separate self and direct the energy of the separate self to what are seen to be more noble and exalted ends. In the world of economic exchanges and business the separate self-business, which serves its own ends and the ends of its shareholders, is targeted by Marxism as the core source of evil. Marx suggests that only the introduction of some form of socialism, which is business’s version of no self, will save the world from the evils of the corporation.

Level Five:

The evolutionary emergence of level five is form pathology to mythology. At the fifth level the movement is from the pathology of the self, both of business and the person, to the mythology of the individual person and business. At this level of consciousness we witness the evolutionary emergence of the Unique Self and the unique business.

At the level of true self one self-experience is as being an inextricable part of the seamless coat of the universe. At the level of Unique Self you realize that the coat of the universe in which you are a part is seamless but not featureless. You are a unique feature of essence even as you are not separate from essence in any way. You life in a deep realization of your larger context in the larger schema of reality. You are not apart but a part of all that is. However you realize that you are a unique part of all that is. You are a unique expression of essence. You are the personal face of essence. This is not the personal at the level of separate self. Separate self does not have a felt experience of being an indivisible part of essence.

Unique Self is obviously part of essence and just an obviously an utterly irreducible and unique expression of essence. Unique Self realizes that she has Unique Gifts to live and give that are not merely creative forms of expression but are sorely needed by all that is. Unique Self is true self-seeing through a unique set of eyes. Unique Self has a unique perspective on the world, which creates a new space of insight, which creates new possibilities and new knowing. In fact one might accurately say that True Self plus perspective = Unique Self. The same is true of the unique business.

The Unique Business has a unique perspective on the world, which creates its ability to give Unique Gifts. The Unique business does not superficially imitate competitors but rather turns inwards and outwards to self understand its own unique gifts of service or goods to the market places. The sense of that Unique Gift is the essential energy that guides and directs the business. The Unique business cultivates it’s particular set of eyes to gain unique insight into the market place and the customer which yield new opportunities to give is unique gifts in ways which serves the highest interests of all parties involved. The marketplaces feel the signature uniqueness of the business and reward it with the kind of attention and loyalty, which creates prosperity.

Just like Unique Self naturally realizes his or her larger context so does Unique Business.

For that reason precisely the unique business moves from a shareholder model to a stakeholder model. Unique Business understands that it is naturally constituted not only by investor shareholders but also by a host of other essential stakeholders, which are part of the larger eco system of the business. These stakeholders include employees, vendors and suppliers, families of employees, vendors and suppliers, communities that hold and interface with the business, and even include the environment and future generations. All are part of the true context in which the business needs to both survive and thrive.

Unique Self and Unique Business are each evolutionary emergents, which are just now being recognized. Each are aligned with the unique evolutionary impulse that lives in them as them and through them. Each are sources of iconic evolutionary creativity which creates greater and greater depths of compassion, love and value.

Photo Credit: seekingthomas

Filed Under: All Posts, Learning & Work, Unique Self Tagged With: , , , , ,

World to U.S. Occupiers: Stop whining, you are also the top 1 percent!

April 12, 2012 at 7:51 pm by Leave a Comment

Occupy LA

By Joe Perez

Last fall, the eruption of the Occupy Wall Street movement in protests in major cities across the U.S. and elsewhere focused attention on income inequality. At the time, I expressed my support for the cause, when it is viewed not as a power play between haves and have-nots, but as a movement of integration towards greater fairness and balance in the world’s evolving consciousness.

From Spirit’s perspective, as I noted at the time, we are all the 99% and we are all the 1%. But there’s a much wider global lens that I did not speak to, which is now being observed by writers including Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development.

Writing in Foreign Policy, Kenny says:

First things first: America’s rich are really, really rich. U.S. Census data suggest every man, woman, and child in the top 1 percent of U.S. households gets about $1,500 to live on each day, every day. By contrast, the average U.S. household is scraping by on around $55 per person per day. But the global average is about a fifth of that.

So by global standards, America’s middle class is also really, really rich. To make it into the richest 1 percent globally, all you need is an income of around $34,000, according to World Bank economist Branko Milanovic. The average family in the United States has more than three times the income of those living in poverty in America, and nearly 50 times that of the world’s poorest. Many of America’s 99 percenters, and the West’s, are really 1 percenters on a global level.

Why are so many Americans in the world’s 99th percentile of income, and much of the rest of the world poorer? Not owing to merit, continues Kenny:

Nor did the Western 99 percent “earn” most of their wealth, any more than the top 1 percent “earned” theirs. It’s the luck of where you’re born, according to the late Nobel Prize-winning economist Herbert Simon, who estimated that the benefits of living in a well-functioning economy probably account for 90 percent of individual income.

Based on the notion that there is no moral reason why some people make more than others, economist Herbert Simon argues for radical global wealth redistribution:

“On moral grounds,” he wrote, “we could argue for a flat income tax of 90 percent to return that wealth to its real owners” — i.e., everyone else in the country. That radical suggestion makes the Occupy Wall Street crowd look like a bunch of free-market libertarians.

Kenny doesn’t go so far as to back Simon’s plan, but he is definitely not giving comfort to the Occupy movement in the U.S. which feels indignant about wealth inequality when it concerns people richer than themselves, but feel nothing about their own relative wealth compared to the rest of the world. Kenny continues:

Plus, taxing the West’s obscenely rich to help a Western middle class that is merely very rich doesn’t seem like the highest of priorities, frankly. We need to deal with inequality all the way down to the bottom of the income pyramid, for everyone’s sake.

IMF research suggests that countries with high levels of inequality are far more likely to fall into financial crisis and far less likely to sustain economic growth. But this is not just about taxing the richest 1 percent to help the middle 60. It’s about taxing the middle 60 to help the bottom 20. And ensuring that rich and poor alike worldwide have access to basic health care and education, with their well-documented effects on income and productivity, will work to the benefit of the Western middle class. If Americans and Europeans want to export their way out of recession, they need rich consumers elsewhere.

So stop whining, Occupiers. It is high time for the richest 1 percent to help the rest catch up. But don’t fool yourself — if you live in the West, you probably are that 1 percent.

Read the whole thing.

To repeat, if you make more than about $34,000 a year, YOU are part of the 1%.

So now, tell me again how angry and resentful and hateful you got as you stood outside the Wall Street sign, broke the windows of banks, and hollered to the moon about the evil rich millionaires and billionaires?

Sorry, I goofed. That wasn’t you; it was somebody else. Never mind.

Income inequality deserves to be a topic high on the agenda for discussion in the U.S. and around the world, as part of a larger discussion about global economic development and the best relationship between government and private sector initiatives. People making $4,000 or $14,000 or $24,000 or $34,000 a year don’t deserve nutritious food, quality health care, and college educations any less than those of us in the top 1%.

Taking an integral perspective means trying to look at the income inequality topic sympathetically from as many different perspectives as possible, and not simply resting content with one’s own opinions and prejudices. By challenging ourselves to see the world from the view of both the 1% and the 99%, and looking at ways that we can increase the level of love and compassion all the way around, we can avoid falling into some serious mistakes.

There is reason for urgency around this. Everywhere in the world, there are people who have no clean water, no job, and no hope for a college education for their children.

World Spirituality tells us that as we find our Unique Self, we understand increasingly that there is only one True Self anywhere in existence. We are all the True Self, and being kind and just to both the 1% and the 99%, and seing through the illusions that seem to divide us, is all part of our urgent work of Self-love.

Originally posted on March 1, 2012, on Awake, Aware & Alive.

Filed Under: Learning & Work Tagged With: , , , ,