Spiritual decay at roots of economic collapse

[Robbien]

Despite the inauguration of a new president, many of us fear the economic storm swirling around us will become even worse. We worry as millions of jobs are threatened, savings are decimated, banks implode, and the auto industry collapses. Even Huntsville may not be recession-proof.

These are hard times. Over the next years our whole economy may have to be re-structured: less money shuffling and more research, innovation, invention, fabrication and manufacturing.

I believe the roots of our economic crisis are spiritual. Greed has been articulated into the desire to earn inordinate returns on investments, shady even dishonest business practices and, in some cases, outright fraud in our financial industry and in ordinary commerce, unwillingness to engage in honest labor, exorbitant compensation of top managers who suppress the average worker's pay, the loss of the work ethic of giving an honest day's labor for an honest day's pay.

All of these practices are signs of spiritual decay in our society. In addition, our consumerism, defining ourselves by what we buy and what we own, spiritually distorts our economic lives, and has left many of us swimming in debt.

Economic stimulus alone will not put our economy back on the road to sanity - and let's talk about sanity rather than prosperity. Prosperity has been way oversold. Material stuff will not make us happy. The purpose of life is not to accumulate the most stuff.

. . .

At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, the famous author Kurt Vonnegut informed his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his landmark novel, "Catch 22," over its whole history.

Heller responded, "Yes, but I have something he will never have - Enough."


http://www.al.com/religion/huntsvilletimes/news.ssf?/base/living/1232705797193000.xml&coll=1

[The Blue Flower]

1. "Enough."

Wonderful quotation.

[wryter2000]

2. Now, THAT's what I call Christianity n/t

n/t

[Fearless]

3. Perhaps the economic decay of the Catholic Church...

:rofl:

[8 track mind]

10. "This is not your father's Christianity!!!!"

God 2.0! now with real simulated walnut woodgrain veneer!

:rofl:

[Fearless]

11. Hehe.

:rofl:

[dmallind]

4. How is greed or lack of it spiritual? NT

[Robbien]

6. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins

To be avoided at all costs for the betterment of one's soul.

[kristopher]

15. What, exactly, is a "sin"? nt

[Two Americas]

20. a bad thing

It is just an archaic word.

[tama]

30. Error

Greek for "sin", hamartia, means error. Deadly sin is deadly error. We have saying that greed has shitty end.

[kristopher]

36. Not really.

The current Western usage explicitly relates to an offense against a deity. Otherwise it is just a crime or a mistake, not a "sin".

[Two Americas]

21. intangible

Morals, ethics, principles exist separate from the tangible, or so we imagine. Hence "spirit."

[dmallind]

23. Insufficent distinction IMO

Morals are human actions, governed by entirely human attributes. There is no need to posit anything metaphysical at all to deal with morals. Morality can even be reduced to math in its purest form, and deliver better results than any spiritual attempts.

[Two Americas]

25. we do that

We humans do this. It is universal. It is part of our creative imagination.

Certainly, everything can be reduced to math in its purest form. People do that with music. As a musician, I am confident in saying that those who do so are missing the truth about music.

[kristopher]

5. You do know there is a difference

between 'spiritual' and 'ethical', right?

[enlightenment]

7. The author of that article apparently does not. nt

[Robbien]

8. Spirituality does not necessarily mean a belief in religion

Spirituality just refers to the inner soul versus material matters.

[RaleighNCDUer]

12. IOW, spirituality (can't say spiritualism - that's a whole nother critter) is

the inverse of materialism.

A distinction which I, as an atheist, can appreciate. Goodness and contentment are just as available to us so-called 'materialists', and the amassing of material goods can be just as much an anathema to us as to any monk.

Religion and supernatural beings are not necessary to a spiritual life.

[Robbien]

16. Exactly. That's what I figure to be the case

:)

[kristopher]

14. You don't think belief in a "soul" is a form of religiosity? nt

[Robbien]

17. Not in the way I view it

A soul is an inner force which guides one's thinking and moral behavior. Not necessarily linked to an eternal god of some sort.

[kristopher]

18. How is it different from the brain? nt

[Robbien]

19. Huh?

The brain is physical, a piece of meat.

Spirituality/soul is a sense. One's soul is the brain as much as one's foot is the brain since the brain is how physically one controls/expresses one's foot and soul.

[muriel_volestrangler]

26. An 'inner force', or a 'sense'?

They seem quite different things, to me. A sense is either a way the outside world is perceived by the brain (eg hearing), or an idea or feeling ("a sense of foreboding"). So I suppose you mean the latter - but do you just mean it's the brain's sense of fairness? Or do you think we have souls/spirits that would exist without our brains? If the latter, then it's tending to get into religious ideas.

[tama]

32. There is evidence

in e.g. in NDE that clinically brain dead (freezed for operation) can have "OBE" and verifiable recollections of what happened during the operation, even from a viewpoint the patient could not have sensed from her "material" position, even if she had not been clinically brain dead.

Recutionism - belief that all mental phenomena reduce to electro-chemical processes in the nervous system - is just a belief. A very strong belief in many cases, just as many belief systems tend to be.

[kristopher]

37. I would be very interested in seeing this evidence.

In order to determine it's validity. I doubt it has any.

[tama]

31. Well,

The hypothesis that all mental fenomena causally reduce to "brain" (of just classical mechanics) is not scientific truth, it's merely a hypothesis, often also a paradigma or even metaphysical presupposition.

For all we know, mind has causal effects over matter just as matter has causal effects over matter, what happens, happens both ways. At deeper levels (quantum, math, etc. "unknown unknowns") the distinction between "mental" and "material" (in the sense of classical 4D mechanics) becomes a blur and the difference aspectual, so dualism is not a necessary position.

[kristopher]

38. Errr, no.

"For all we know..."

Actually all that we "know" says your statement has no support.

[tularetom]

9. Good post - I expected something completely different from your title

Like a pat robertson type statement that god was punishing us with this economic downturn because we turned our backs on him. And we needed to rediscover jeebus before things were going to get better.

[DavidDvorkin]

13. This is misusing "spiritual" to mean "ethical".

[bertman]

22. I agree with you, DavidDvorkin. Good thread Robbien. It doesn't take believing in

Jaheezus to make one honorable, ethical, moral, compassionate, or empathetic.

[Joe Chi Minh]

27. Why are you people being so pedantic! You must have the brains of amoebas.

The guy made a point that needs to be expressed and repeated until the vandals of your economy can't avoid hearing it. And you lot are quibbling about semantics? If that's the kind of sense of priorities possessed by DUers, the US is in a much worse way than I realised.

The soul consists of the memory, will and understanding. I'm not arguing the toss about it. Take it or leave it.

No offence intended to you bert. I put it down to your hubbly-bubly!

[kristopher]

28. So you think accurate understanding of cause and effect is the realm of amoebas?

The OP laments greed as the basis of our economic woes and then opines that "spiritual decay" is at the root of greed.

I disagree and I believe objective evidence is on my side. In a study of "religiosity" and social problems in the developed countries, a striking correlation was demonstrated that shows a direct relationship between what is generally conceived of as spirituality and the incidence of social ills in nations. The simple truth is the more people look to mysticism as a solution to social problems, the less they appear to concern themselves with the real causes.

So while I can agree with greed being a factor; greed is an inevitable part of the human condition. The real problem resulted from idiots selecting leaders based on "spiritual" considerations instead of standards such as intelligence, capability, compassion and temperament.

[tama]

34. Not so

Etymologically "ethical" means "according to the customs (ethea) of a tribe, city-state, any human community". If the customs of a community are mindless consumerism, devastation of natural habitats, greed and hunger for power and an individual abides to those customs, then that individual is "ethical".

"Spiritual" bears often, but not necessary allways, the meaning of holistic sense of belonging to larger wholes, not only community but also Nature/God/Great Spirit - conviction that all forms of life and not even exclusively, have "spirit".

[kristopher]

39. Researching the root of a word is only the starting point for understanding meaning

Ethics deals with much deeper values than the word "customs" implies. Not that in a narrow sense your definition is wrong, it is simply incomplete. Note the wider range of usage that these definitions provide:
http://www.google.com/search?ned=tus&rec=0&hl=en&ned=tus&q=define%3A+ethical&btnmeta%3Dsearch%3Dsearch=Search+the+Web

# Ethics is a major branch of philosophy, encompassing right conduct and good life. It is significantly broader than the common conception of analyzing right and wrong. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical

# ethics - ethical motive: motivation based on ideas of right and wrong
# ethics - the philosophical study of moral values and rules
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Also I'd say that you would have a heck of a time supporting the assertion that "mindless consumerism, devastation of natural habitats, greed and hunger for power" are values that are broadly accepted in this society as "right". There may be widespread abuse resulting from the application of those values by certain corrupt individuals, but as long as they and their actions are viewed as abusive and corrupt, you have prima facia evidence that these are not the "customs of the community".
No?

[Joe Chi Minh]

24. Absolutely spot on. And the're still clinging to their notion of the apex of morality

as economic self-reliance. Never mind Christ's parable of the Widow's Mite, Thatcher had the brilliant insight that the virtue of the Good Samaritan lay in his possessing the money to arrange for the injured man to be nurse back to health. And Blair's rationale for cutting the benefit of single mothers: we must help them!

[tama]

29. Alianation from nature

is spiritual decay.

[Baby Snooks]

33. "I have, therefore I am..."

That sums up our society. We are what we have. And so of course we can never have enough.

[Alcibiades]

35. The economic collapse is rooted in bad economic theory

That claims to also be the best in promoting social utility. Spiritual values have no part in it, unless it's election time.

We do need to change. Instead of asking "is this business profitable" we should ask "does it fill a real human need?"