Capitalistic economy is very well acquainted with the categories of buying, selling, cost and profit. In a transitional period where the purchasing capacity is lowering there is another emerging category that we can call use or utilization. Suppose that you do not have the money to buy a non-perishable commodity. What other options do you have? Rent, take a loan, use the credit card, exchange, …. what else? You can borrow on a condition of trust. You use a commodity and you return it in the same state after a period of time. This is relatively something common for public libraries where you can borrow books, CD, videos with a library card on the condition of returning them in good state before a certain time. Can the same concept be extended to other commodities, for example, tools, bikes, jewelry, paintings and musical instruments?

In Iowa City the public library carries not only books, CDs and videos for use and return, but also paintings that can furnish a home for three months and keep rotating among users of the library. In Philadelphia there is a tool library where it is possible to use and return work tools like chain saw, skill saw, etc. In some countries of Europe bikes can be used and returned free of charge at the train station. There is nothing new in the concept of borrowing and returning. What can be innovative is to have a membership card that allows to use multiple commodities in different locations and potentially in any country.

We are used to debit, credit and discount merchant cards. Can we envision a “share card” that is only for the use of commodities without having to purchase anything besides a membership? It means that with a yearly fee of $50, for example, you are allowed to borrow, wear and return jewelry worth of thousands of dollars if purchased. It seems incredible but jewelry is actually one of the most durable commodities. Thus, it can be used by multiple people by rotation on a condition of trust.

Renting and sharing are two different categories. In renting no membership condition is required. In sharing, membership is essential. For example, several companies are offering car renting opportunities and also a whole new sector of economy is developing as car sharing. The main difference between renting and sharing is the mind set. In renting you are still a consumer with no interest in maintaining the good state of the commodities besides the penalties you might incur. In sharing there is a cooperative use recognized in the form of membership and potentially rewarded within the same frame.

Envisioning the share card as a economic way to use commodities at large we may consider that producers might recover an interest towards the durability of their goods. They can develop lines of products only for use and not for sale, with higher quality standards. The “use and throw” mentality may get gradually replaced by a more conscious “use and share” way of life. Prout, the Progressive Utilization Theory, in its fifth principle, states, “The method of utilization should vary according to time, place and person, and the utilization should be of a progressive nature.”

Is the “share card” a bridge from Capitalism to a Proutist Society?

In her 1993 book “Shame,” Bangladeshi writer Tasrima Naslin draws upon the bloody conflicts generated by clashing religious beliefs: In 1992, hard-line Hindus in India, claiming that the Moslem Basri mosque at Ayodhya was built upon a holy Hindu site, tore the mosque to the ground. Naslin uses this actual event as a stepping-off point for her fictional story, in which Muslims in Bangladesh retaliate for the Ayodhya incident by hunting down and killing local Hindus.

Shame sharp-focused on the dangers of an outlook circumscribed by limiting sectarian boundaries. Characters in the book behave as if a rubber band is bound tight around their minds, engaging in tit for tat violence, unable to see beyond their immediate “tribal encampment.” As an ironic coda of life imitating art, a fatwah was levied against Naslin by a Bangladeshi fundamentalist Muslim organization.

The book was striking, but perhaps did not reach much of a Western audience. The spectre of dogma sprang into far greater relief for many, especially in the US, following the incidents of September 11th. Nineteen men who had a particular belief in God and his sanction of their actions crashed a plane into twin towers, killing thousands. It is said they were acting on their belief that female virgins waited in heaven for martyrs as reward for their actions.

Dogma is no new thing; it may be as old as thought itself. The very antiquity of beliefs often grants them,
in believers’ minds, a special legitimacy, and at the same time, renders them more intractable. The term
“dogma” started out as a religious one, originally used in the Catholic Church to describe an assertion of
metaphysical truth, accepted as doctrine. The dictionary definition broadens this: dogma is something held
as an established opinion, a definite authoritative tenet. These days the word has acquired an even more
negative connotation, as an idea which is held to against all reason.

It is not always easy to say what is or is not dogma, nor perhaps should one lightly do so. One man’s dogma
is another’s cherished ideal. Intellectuals need to take care in espousing their values and ideas, and
especially in criticizing others’. There are important social, cultural, and historical factors at play in
determining what people believe and why. Such ideas have to do with creating civic cohesion, with ensuring
survival. But, and here lies the rub, they may also deal with one group of people exploiting another. The
20th century served as mute witness to countless instances when belief gelled into totalizing ideology, with
catastrophic results.

Still, as a jumping off place for understanding, perhaps we can generalize a little, in trying to circle in
on what dogma consists of. We might say that dogma often has a backward looking nature, not keeping pace
with social changes. It is often passed on from generation to eneration. It may be highly emotionally loaded.
It is often at the root of fundamentalism. It may lead to behaviors which are selfish or exploitative. And it
is often embraced collectively.

“Crowds of silent voices whisper in our ears, transforming the nature of what we see and hear. Some are those
of childhood authorities and heroes, others come from family and peers. The strangest emerge from beyond the
grave. A vast chorus of long-gone ancients constitutes a notso-silent majority whose legacy has what may be
the most dramatic effect of all on our vision of reality.” – Howard Bloom.

Prout founder P. R. Sarkar has written a good deal about dogma and its effect on society. He offers this
concise definition: “Dogma is an idea with a rigid boundary line, which won’t allow you to go beyond the
periphery of that boundary line. Thus dogma goes against the fundamental spirit of the human mind. The human
mind won’t tolerate anything rigid. It wants movement — not only movement, but accelerated movement.”

This definition moves us beyond the dictionary one, and also asserts certain psychological ruths. It posits
a directed, fluid concept of human existence. In another book, Sarkar compares human existence to a flowing
stream, as opposed to a stagnant pool. If the human mind craves expansion, then dogma not only creates
division and conflict, but is also fundamentally opposed to this movement. Movement towards what? Towards a
knowledge of the self. Sarkar lambasts philosophies which are based on materialism, because they are
“anti-human.” Rather, he encourages broadness of vision – physical, intellectual and, particularly,
spiritual development. Humanity’s evolutionary future lies in the expansion of consciousness.
Examples of dogma, both past and present, abound: In the Middle Ages, clerics joined knights fighting in the
Crusades. Forbidden to spill blood, they eschewed swords, and instead walloped their enemies on the head with
a hammer.

Hard-line Israeli settlers, believing God has commanded them to settle Palestine, daily encroach further into
Palestinian lands, upping the ante of tension in that contentious region.

One area in which dogma has particularly pernicious effects is the status of women. In India, for example,
the practice of sati allowed for the burning of Hindu widows on their husband’s funeral pyre. Yet this
was brought about by a distortion of scriptures, according to Sarkar. Priests misquoted a scripture which said
women shall lead the funeral procession, twisting it to say the widow shall walk into the fire. Although
nowadays sati has been banned, its legacy lingers, with the practice of in-laws pouring gasoline over unwanted
widows and setting them afire.

Or consider this quote: “A man should certainly not cover his head, since he is the image of God and reflects
God’s glory; but woman is the reflection of man’s glory. For man did not come from women, but woman was
created for the sake of man.” Although it is common to view Islam as the religion most constricting to women,
the above is not something out of Shariya law, but instead comes from 1 Corinthians. A strong anti-intellectual,
anti-scientific bias often accompanies dogmatic belief. “I ain’t got no learnin’ and never had none… Glory be to
the Lamb!

Some folks work their hands off’n up to the elbows to give their younguns education, and all they do is send
their young-uns to hell…” This was uttered by a Pentecostal preacher at the time of the Scopes trial, the
famous debate on evolution being taught in the schools in the U.S. at the turn of the last century.

Many fundamentalists’ ideas are rooted in a dogmatic and literal adherence to scripture, even when science has
convincingly challenged the legitimacy of their notions. (Of course, science, too, must be scrutinized for
signs of dogma.)

In an essay entitled “The Roots of the Moral Majority,” David Harrel notes that Christian fundamentalists have
clung tightly to a number of beliefs and practices. These include anti-evolutionism, school prayer, militarism,
the inerrancy of Scripture, and pre-millenialism (the belief in the “rapturing” of believers up into heaven,
and a period of reign of Christ on arth).

American Christian fundamentalists have in recent years entered the political arena, although, as Harrel notes,
they did so only “when it seemed to them that the very structure of society was seriously threatened by
modernism and liberalism.”

Responding to Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell’s claims of impending moral doom in American society, Harrel
quotes William Fore of the National Council of Churches: “It is true that the nation needs spiritual reform…
that our society has fallen into a moral cynicism that feeds corruption….Falwell is partly right, and this makes
him far more dangerous than if he were totally wrong.” Sarkar distinguishes between religion and spirituality.
Spiritual practices strengthen and free the mind, offering direct communion with the highest reality and a sense
of universal connectedness, while religion is based on tradition and belief, and often merely leads to
sectarianism.

Dogmatists often believe that they are doing God’s will, that their beliefs are divinely anctioned. And yet,
says Sarkar, “People who follow dogmacentered philosophy exploit others in the name of providence for their
own self-interest. For example, the proponents of dogma often claim that they have been blessed with divine
revelation. They say that they had a dream in which God appeared before them and commanded them to do
particular work, and on this pretext they exploit others to the full.”

And, “there are many philosophies which tend to crudify the human mind, and make people violent and
inconsiderate. They make people believe that they are God’s favourite children, whereas the rest of humanity are
cursed. Although these views have philosophical sanction, they do not enjoy the sanction of the A’tman.” Here
Sarkar refers to the deepest layer of human existence, the soul, which, according to his spiritual philosophy, is
in congruence with Cosmic Consciousness.

Religions, Sarkar says, know how to twist their teachings to deny the truth and adapt to different
circumstances, in order to secure the interests of a special, privileged class. They “sentimentalize” the minds
of people, and through the use of stories, myths and parables, create superiority, inferiority and fear complexes.

Yet dogma is not simply a religious phenomenon. Tenets of economic thought can be clung to as fiercely, as
blindly, and often with as bloody consequences, as religious ones. The instances of harmful adherence to
social and economic dogmas and hegemonic doctrines are too numerous to mention. As just one example,
Stalin, attempting to force the round pegs of economic reality in the Soviet steppes into the square holes of
his Marxist doctrine, slaughtered tens of millions.

How can dogma be evaluated? Is it possible to judge another’s beliefs? How is one to avoid the accusation of
cultural bias? In matters of human rights, for example, especially when criticism comes from Western sources,
leaders of non-Western countries retort that their internal affairs are their own business. Human rights, they
argue, are not universally interpreted in the same way, and cultural beliefs in certain notions of human nature
or governance excuse any violations. With the efforts of the United Nations, the World Court, and numerous
non-governmental organizations working for the protection of human rights, the world is now struggling towards
a consensus on the necessity to codify and protect these rights. Belief, of course, cannot be legislated. But
behavior can.

Skepticism, said Santayana, is the chastity of the mind. Is a skeptical stance, then, the way to begin to evaluate
belief systems? It is possible to go too far, as many postmodernists do, discounting all beliefs as constructed,
and proceeding to deconstruct them. There are those who argue for a cultural, and indeed, a philosophical
relativism. Yet this too often becomes paralyzing, as every inch of ground begins to shift beneath one’s feet.
Sarkar is not arguing for skepticism, per se. He sees definite truths in life.

A vigorous intellectual life, promoting the questioning, debate and free exchange of opinions and information
is the first step. In other words, rationality. Beliefs, Sarkar says, may be evaluated based upon their degree
of rationality. And this rationality needs to be further rooted in a universal outlook, which will promote the
physical, mental and spiritual well-being of every human on the planet. Furthermore, as Sarkar argues in his
book Neo-Humanism, plants and animals should be included in these considerations, since they also have
existential value.

Ethics also play a role in shaping the parameters of belief; a person established in morality will be less likely
to embrace beliefs which are harmful to others. According to Sarkar, “to counteract the malevolent effect of
dogma-centred philosophies, the two most important factors are the development of rationality and the spread of
education. Merely attending school and university classes will not necessarily have the desired effect. Stress
should be placed on education which produces a high degree of rationality in the human mind, and this type of
education should be spread amongst the people. So, to counteract religious dogma we have to adopt a two-fold
approach. First, the path of logic and reason must be adopted… Simultaneously, the spiritual sentiment must be
inculcated in human minds as this is more powerful than the religious sentiment. For this people should be
properly educated in the way of spirituality.”

Each person must weigh the relevant ideas, consider them rationally, experiment with them, and decide for
themselves. At the same time, the practical effort to open one’s heart and expand one’s consciousness lays the
groundwork for an outlook free of exploitative tendencies. It is crucial that the ideas of compassion, universal
brother- and sisterhood, and the linking of one’s spirit with a greater reality, become more than simply ideas.
Their beauty and truth must be realized through practice. This combination of rationality and spirituality will
open the door to an expansive, dogma-free existence.

Andy Douglas is a freelance writer and a graduate student in creative nonfiction writing at the
University of Iowa. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

Namaskar is a traditional yogic greeting that means, “I greet the divinity within you with all the charms of my mind and the cordiality of my heart.”
We are divine beings, each one of us. We have, in addition to physical and mental qualities, spiritual qualities. Our journey, as individuals and as members of a global community struggling against economic globalization and injustice, is two-fold. It is personal, and it is collective.

Capitalism teaches the superiority of the individual: “I win, you lose.” Or, “I win and it really doesn’t matter what happens to the rest of the world.” What are the lessons we teach our children in school? “Get a good education, then get a good job and make some money.” Western education offers no clear message of social responsibility. We have responsibilities to others as well as individual rights.

Compassion is the most important quality for a spiritualist to have. We need to feel compassion for others and to serve those who are less fortunate than ourselves.

So our journey is both external and internal. Just as we learn from all our personal experiences, so we also learn from the collective struggle for social justice.

I teach prisoners, as Father Jim Consedine does [another speaker at the conference]. I teach them meditation and yoga every week, and personally I find it very gratifying, because they are in a process of transformation. I am inspired by the example that my spiritual master, Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar <../../sarkar/default.htm>, gave when the first person he chose to teach meditation to was an infamous criminal in Calcutta who later became a great saint and spiritual visionary. So I think, “If that was the person who he felt was most worthy of spiritual transformation, then who am I to judge the spiritual potential of others?”

We are all brothers and sisters. When I was a child, I often used to fight with my brother and sister, but of course we remained family. In the same way, human beings have lots of differences, and I’m going to fight and struggle against injustice. But I always want to remember that I’m fighting and struggling against the bad actions that people do and not against who they are. Because they are, forever, my brothers and sisters, too.

I accept a universal definition of God: that which is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. For some, this may seem a rather standard dictionary definition of the Supreme Being. But I think the definition is very revolutionary. If He is everywhere, then that means He is right inside me and He is right inside you and He is right inside our planet earth.

God is both He and She. I use the male pronoun unnecessarily, because I have trouble calling the One I feel so close to an “It”. Both the masculine and the feminine are equally present in that Supreme Being — it is we who are limited by our concepts of male and female.
If that Being is here in me and here in you, then that means I have to act accordingly, I have to work accordingly. I cannot be a spiritual capitalist, one who says, “I’m going to go to a nice monastery, to a beautiful forest retreat, to the mountains, I’m only going to do my spiritual journey.” That’s capitalism. That’s selfishness.

In my opinion, spirituality is everywhere. In some places, of course, you will feel more spiritual energy. But you don’t have to go on a pilgrimage to any place, because if you close your eyes, wherever you are, you can find all that you seek. So that inner journey is more important than any pilgrimage. Yes, I like to go to the mountains sometimes, to the forests, I love nature, and clearly there is more spiritual energy in some places, such as this beautiful Maori center. But that’s relative. We shouldn’t stop our progress because we’re not in a spiritual place. I’ll meditate four times a day wherever I am.

Consumerism and materialism is what our current society teaches us. It goes like this: “Buy a new pair of Nike tennis shoes and you’ll be happy. Buy a new car and you’ll be happy.” (You’ll probably get a woman with the car, because most advertisements have a beautiful woman next to the car, so obviously you’re going to get that, too!)

That’s a lie. These capitalist lies are what we have to stop, because they are destroying human minds, convincing people that money is the secret to happiness. Television, film, radio, magazines all get money from advertisers to spread these lies. When our minds become clear and strong in meditation, in spiritual practices, then we can begin to see through the veil of lies and legitimacy. Happiness doesn’t come from any material thing; it comes from your own heart. That’s a fundamental truth.

Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar <../../sarkar/default.htm>, the founder of Prout <../5fpp/5fpp.htm>, was both a great spiritual master and also a revolutionary. I first met him in January 1978 in a prison cell in India where he was a political prisoner for seven years. After his release, the US, UK, Australia and some other rich countries refused to give him a visa because they said he was a dangerous revolutionary.

In August 1979, he came to Bangkok, Thailand where I was working. I had the wonderful opportunity to spend seven days with him. One very dark night, what I would call a very “Tantric” night, three of us went with him on a walk in a park. At one point he stopped and explained why the dictator President Ferdinand Marcos had just deported him from the Philippines:

“ They say I am a dangerous man. But I am not a dangerous man; I am not a strong man. Imagine, they are scared of me, and I am only five feet two inches tall!
“ You know how a fish store smells? Ugh! Yet some people like that ‘fishy’ smell. Only those who like the ‘fishy’ smell of selfishness are afraid of me. Selfishness is a mental disease and they know that Prout gives no scope for selfishness.”

We are trying to create a world that limits the expression of that particular mental disease. I used to work in a psychiatric hospital, and I have friends with all kinds of mental diseases. They need a certain kind of care. But we must not allow people with the mental disease of selfishness to run our economies and our countries, to dictate the world that our children can have.

As spiritualists, we have to unite. We have to unite with other spiritualists, like these great people beside me. We have to unite with people of all expressions and beliefs and faiths. I believe the only “ism” that we can support is universalism, the idea that we are one human family. You have your beliefs, and I have mine, but we are all moving in the same direction. If we climb a mountain, it doesn’t matter from which side of the mountain you start your climb; we’re all going to reach the summit together.

I believe that spiritual practices are fundamental to the spiritual path. They are what you actually do to get there, whether they take the form of some kind of meditation or some kind of deep personal inner reflection. It is gratifying to work for an organization that teaches meditation free of charge. Whatever type of meditation we do, our goal is to become better people. An ideal human being, a saint-like person, a God-like person – who cares what their faith is, who cares whether they are Muslim or Jew or Catholic or Protestant or a yogi? When we become ideal human beings, then we’ll all be one.

To unite the moralists, to unite those people who are fighting against injustice, against exploitation, is our goal. Our spiritual practices, our spiritual vision, our spiritual love and compassion are fundamental to get there. They are our strength, our inner sustenance.

Logically, if we look at the world, global ecological destruction is a very real possibility. Spiritually, though, I know we’re going to make it. P. R. Sarkar said, “Your future is bright. It is brighter than gold, it is brighter than platinum, it is brighter than anything you can ever imagine. And you’ll see it with your own eyes.”

How will it happen? I don’t know. And whether it happens this year, or next year, or later, I’m going to continue doing what I’m doing now: fighting for social justice, working against capitalist exploitation, doing my spiritual practices and encouraging everyone else in this human family to learn and try them, too. Because we need inner peace and we need global peace. Without one, we have an angry world. Without the other, we have people dying completely unnecessarily. That’s a crime. That’s totally unacceptable. Humanity is bleeding. We must awaken. We must work together. We must make a better world. We don’t have another option.

The Failure of Economism

The worldview that Truman so successfully articulated has been termed economism by the German author and green activist Wolfgang Sachs. According to this worldview, a country’s level of civilization is based on its ability to produce material goods–that is, to increase its GNP. To the society’s in the South, who had, for centuries, advanced a more or less sustainable agricultural economy and advanced some of the world’s most sophisticated cultures, this model appeared to have little meaning. Yet, according to the Truman doctrine, these Southern countries were from now on to be recognized as poor, struggling nations, whose main goal was to copy the North by climbing to the top of the ladder of material progress.

Thus economic values superseded all other societal values. According to Sachs, a society no longer had an economy, society simply was the economy. However, this materialistic and one-dimensional ethos was not always embraced by the countries of the South. For them, society included a tapestry of functions, ideals, modes of knowing and cultural legacies that were often diametrically opposed to a society driven by the streamlined dictates of maximum economic output.

Consequently, over the past 40 years, the North’s development strategies have caused tremendous cultural upheaval. Thousands of local or indigenous subsistence cultures have been decimated during the forced process of joining the global race toward economism. However, the gap between the so-called underdeveloped and developed countries has not been closed. To the contrary, it has widened. In the process, millions of people have become uprooted from their local environment to join the poor day laborers or unemployed struggling to eke out a living in dilapidated and burgeoning shanty-towns from Mexico City to Calcutta. In short, modern development practices have been, for the most part, detrimental to both local economies and local cultures.

Economic Development and the Destruction of the Environment

The myth that the global economy can continue along the path it has been following since Truman’s speech in 1949 stems in part from the narrow worldview of economism. According to the business weeklies and forecasts by economists, the world’s economy is relatively healthy and long term economic growth prospects are promising. That is, relatively healthy for those countries with an advanced industrial or post-industrial economy, fueled, in part, by cheap labor and raw materials from the South.

In Africa and Asia, for example, the economic prospects for most people are not promising. But more to the point, when it comes to relate economic demand levels to the health of the natural world, economic planners are at a loss. In fact, economic planning, guided as it is by economic indicators and basing its future predictions on past performances, have worried little about its impact or relation to the environment. Economism, in other words, often do not see the intricate relationship between economic output and its effect on the global ecosystem.

This shortsightedness has had disastrous environmental consequences with often equally calamitous consequences to people, their culture and livelihood.

Five Reasons Why Development Has Not Eradicated Poverty

The dominant neo-liberal development model has also failed to deliver its promise of eradicating poverty in the world. Here is a summary of the the five main reasons:

1. It has failed to bring economic equity. Economists Herman Daly and John Cobb maintain that development itself contributes directly to the growth of global poverty: “On the whole,…development policies in the Third world have made many landless, filled the vast slums surrounding Third World cities, and added to the problem of hunger.”

2. It has failed to integrate economic and ecological concerns. Too often we are consuming and destroying our biosystems instead of living in harmony with them. More to the point, the materially rich Northern countries extract natural resources from the biologically rich Southern hemisphere, thereby causing both economic and environmental breakdown in the so-called Third World.

3. It has failed to protect local cultures and communities. Multinational companies generally do not ask the local people for permission to profit from its extraction of resources from an area. A typical example is the Choco region of Ecuador were oil and other natural resource companies have built a destructive network of roads, colonized and destroyed half of the country’s rainforest, and devastated the lives of thousands of native peoples.

4. It has failed to establish a global, human security policy, to bring about human rights, peace and justice. According to Michael Renner of the Worldwatch Institute: “A human security policy [must] include…redistribution of wealth, debt relief, job creation, technology development , more democratic and accountable governance, and the strengthening of civil society.”

5. It has failed to provide depth of meaning. Official development policies has expanded the money economy ever more deeply into every sphere of human life. The increasing hunger for more material goods and profits has created a world of inequity, but also an impoverished global culture lacking in deep, human and spiritual values.

Toward Sustainable Economics

The most basic tenets of free market capitalism or economic liberalism, which is the predominant economic model today, can, according to author David C. Korten, be described as follows:

–Sustained economic growth, measured by Gross National Product, is the foundation of human progress and essential to alleviate poverty

–Free markets are the most efficient and socially optimal way to allocate resources

–Economic globalization–the free flow of goods, irrespective of national borders, in an increasingly integrated world market–is beneficial for all

–Local economies should abandon goals of self-sufficiency and instead attract outside investors in order to become internationally competitive

” These tenets,” according to Korten, “have become so deeply embedded within our institutions and popular culture that they are accepted by most people without question… To question them openly has become virtual heresy and invokes the risk of professional censure and career damage in most institutions of business, government, and academia.”

Moreover, the philosophical underpinnings upon which economic liberalism rests are rarely questioned. Briefly, according to Korten, these are: 1) humans are motivated by self-interest; 2) the action that yields the most profit is the most beneficial to individual and society; 3) competition is more beneficial than cooperation; 4) human progress is best measured in consumption, i.e…. those who consume the most contribute more to progress.

” The moral perversity of economic liberalism,” according to Korten, “is perhaps most evident in what it views as economic success in a world in which more than a billion people live in absolute deprivation, go to bed hungry each night, and live without the minimum of adequate shelter and clothing.”

This moral perversity is even more appalling in light of the
mounting evidence that the recent years increase in poverty and deprivation is a direct result of economic liberalism’s monopolistic domination of the Third World

The Need For New Models of Development

Central to the question of how to eradicate poverty is the question of which type of development is best suited for the task. According to the dominant model of development that arose during the post-War era, economic growth is seen as the best way to eradicate poverty. Furthermore, economic growth is best promoted by privatizing community assets, deregulating markets, removing barriers to free-trade and investment, and protecting intellectual property rights.

However, this model, as promoted by the so-called developed nations, has so far failed to eradicate economic inequality, human oppression, environmental imbalance, and the destruction of local cultures. In other words, development has failed to curb the underlying causes of global poverty. Consequently, new development models have arisen as alternatives to the dominant model. These new models are often referred to as “sustainable development.”

Sustainable Development

The sustainable development paradigm was first defined by the UN’s Brundtland report as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Development is defined as “a progressive transformation of economy and society.”

Said another way, sustainable development involves balancing the environmental demands of human economic activities with the regenerative capacity of earth’s eco-systems. While sustainable development calls for substantial reforms in the functioning of the global economy, it does so–in most of its variants–within the context of the neo-liberal, free-market economy dominated by transnational corporations, the IMF and the World Bank.

Alternative Development Models

These development models–which also are referred to as sustainable–call into question some of the core institutions and ideological foundations of the world economy, such as growth, centralized economies, unprotected local markets, private domination of resources, and material increase as the sole measure of progress.

Post-development–holds the view that development theory is riddled with the fundamentally flawed assumptions of Western, industrialized civilization. The discourse of development theory must be abandoned, and new models must be formulated, informed by the traditions of indigenous peoples, spiritual values, and authentic regional cultures. Post-development supports the critique that, as expressed by Vandana Shiva, “development devalued people by declaring them underdeveloped.”

Thus, development promotes a perception of “the Other,”–in this case, the global poor–instead of asserting humanity’s inherent unity.

Sustainable society–holds the view that sustainable development as held by the Brundtland Report is inherently unsustainable, as it calls for dramatic growth in the world economy in order to eliminate poverty. Gowth on such a scale, according to founders Justin Lowe and David Brower of Earth Island Institute, would be “attainable only with cataclysmic costs to the Earth and the future.”

Grass-roots development–a term coined by the New Internationalist magazine to signify a decentralist approach to sustainable development in which individuals and local communities take increasing control over their economic and social destinies, with a corresponding elimination of the influence of big business and, for the most part, big governments. This view has close affinities with the agenda of the bio-regionalists, who would add the need for local control over culture as well.

People-centered development–popularized by David C. Korten of the People-Centered Development Forum. Attempts to advance the emergence of “an awakening civil society,” particularly as it is seeking expression by progressive citizens organizations. Suggests that truly sustainable development can only occur where culture and the institutions of civil society are strong, local communities exercise economic self-determination, ecological systems remain vital, and societies are just and economies equitable.

Natural Capitalism–proposed by Paul Hawken. Advocates socially responsible business practices in order to reverse global environmental and social degradation. This “double bottom line approach” to economics holds that commercial activity should generate both financial and social dividends. Economic reform will occur by holding corporations responsible for their actions through green taxes and external cost accountability. The task of this “capitalism with a green face” is to create new industrial and market designs that are “self-actuating as opposed to regulated or morally mandated.”

Balanced Development–proposed by social theorist Sohail Inayatullah, and others, attempts to move away from the language of development theory by using the ideas of P. R. Sarkar and his PROUT theory (Progressive Utilization Theory). PROUT calls for a dynamically balanced use of physical, mental and spiritual resources for the development of individual and society, and within the context of a strong ecological ethic. Development is not only balanced and dynamic, but it is progressive; progress being conceptualized as movement toward spiritual enlightenment.

Central to PROUT’s vision of a more balanced society are decentralized economics, economic democracy, cooperative enterprises, self-sufficiency, and both a minimum and maximum income.

Emerging from these alternative models of development is the need for a comprehensive theory of development, one which must address, in integrated fashion, economy, ecology, society, and spirituality. To establish this new concept of development in practice, however, will require a fifth element–the political.

All these five elements are today to be found in the dialog on sustainability and development. But how can they be brought together in an integral fashion? Through the large scale integration of political action with the creation of model community-based socio-economic development projects. These locally-based, small scale model development projects can spearhead a development movent that can counter the top-down planning characterized by today’s global economy. Nothing less, it appears, will suffice if we are to replace the world-wide dichotomy of affluence and poverty with a more equitable, humane, and ecological economy.

Economics As If All Living Beings Mattered

What will be the underlying values of the new economy? David C. Korten claims that “a sustainable society needs a spiritual foundation. Why? Because spirituality, not materialism, is the ultimate foundation of life. Economic liberalism has partly failed, he claims, because of its denial of the human quest for inner meaning and meaningful relations. The late British economist E. F. Schumacher concurs. In his seminal book, Small is Beautiful, he warned against the unsustainable nature of capitalism’s rampant materialism:

“Economy as the content of life is a deadly illness, because infinite growth does not fit into a finite world. That economy should not be the content of life, has been told to mankind by all its teachers; that it cannot be, is evident today… If the spiritual value of inner man is neglected, then selfishness, like capitalism, fits the orientation better than a system of love for one’s fellow beings.”

Here Schumacher points out a central dogma in current economic thinking: that it is possible, even desirable, to fulfill infinite human longings with finite things. This materialist philosophy forms the underlying economic doctrine of today’s market capitalism, of our system of unlimited control over productive property. Put bluntly, it supports the dictum that selfishness and greed are good, even necessary fuels for the capitalist engine of growth.

This paradoxical philosophy has resulted in a market system in which land, food, and intellectual ideas are bought and sold without restrictions. As we have seen above, this “free market system” has created an economy of disparity, of unequal buying power, and of a deep schism between rich and poor. More specifically, this philosophy grants the concept of “the divine right of kings” to corporations. In other words, that corporate owners are ultimately only responsible to themselves and their shareholders, not to their employees, nor to the environment, nor to the human community at large.

Finally, this philosophy grants that unlimited accumulation of wealth is both positive and a basic human right.

Today it is widely accepted that unlimited exploitation of the globe’s finite natural resources is unsustainable. There is little support, however, for the idea that an economy based on unlimited accumulation of wealth, or unlimited control over private property, may be the direct cause of today’s economic and environmental problems.
Nevertheless, the accelerated accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few, has caused both economic disparity and environmental degradation. In short, while there has been an increase in the unbridled accumulation of wealth–which has resulted in an increase in GNP and per capita income, particularly in the Northern countries–there has also been an increase in the spread of poverty–both in the North, and, particularly, in the South.

As long as the basic tenet of unlimited hoarding of wealth remains fundamental to our economy, economic disparity and environmental degradation will continue. We will continue to accept as fair and inevitable that economic growth creates concentration of wealth, on the one hand, and unemployment, displacement of people and poverty, on the other. Without a fundamental rethinking of the current economic dogma of private property rights as an absolute right above all other values, and that human progress is best measured as increased material consumption, we cannot create an environmentally sustainable and poverty-free society.

Cosmic Inheritance

Economist E. F. Schumacher wrote that “no system or machinery or economic doctrine or theory stands on its own two feet: it is variably built on a metaphysical foundation, that is to say, upon our basic outlook on life, its meaning and its purpose.” The “metaphysical foundation” of economic liberalism is motivated by self-interest, individual property rights, and the fulfillment of our material or economic needs.

What, then, should be the basic outlook on life of the new economy? The spiritual conception of wealth, as described by Sarkar, expresses a common sentiment among many alternative development thinkers: “This universe is created in the imagination of the Supreme Entity, so the ownership of this universe does not belong to any particular individual; everything is the patrimony of us all. Every living being can utilize their rightful share of this property…This whole animate world is a large joint family in which nature has not assigned any property to any particular individual.”

Sarkar termed this concept of wealth “cosmic inheritance,” and made clear its implications for economic theory: ” The system of individual ownership cannot be accepted as absolute, hence [economic liberalism] too cannot be supported.” With a spiritual worldview as the basis for a new economy, the psychology of greed and selfishness is replaced with the psychology of collective welfare and cooperation.

Sustainable Spirituality

If the purpose of development–as presently conceived–is to increase material amenities, then sustainable development will certainly help us to continue to consume, but it will not help us attain inner fulfillment. Therefore, sustainable spirituality–the idea that true progress is movement toward inner fulfillment, toward self-realization– must be embraced by the sustainable development program. Spiritual progress subsumes material development, as people cannot pursue spiritual growth without adequate basic necessities such as employment, food, shelter, education, and medical care. So, the purpose of development, guided by a sense of spiritual progress, is to help us pursue personal and social pursuits that foster inner growth and communion with people and nature. Activities such as sports, art, music, theater, yoga, meditation, hiking, etc., do not simply fill our lives with more material things, instead they fill our lives with enjoyment, purpose and meaning.

Neo-humanism

Reverence for nature, for all non-human creatures, is a natural extension of such concepts as cosmic inheritance and spiritual progress. “Our universe,” according to Sarkar, “is not only the universe of humans, but the universe of all; it is for all created entities.” Economic activity, therefore, must take into account the existential rights of other species. This outlook is an integral aspect of what Sarkar terms neo-humanism–the view that expands humanism to include a common, unified consciousness behind the diversity of nature. This outlook, this spiritual ethic, is growing amongst many seeking an alternative to the disparities of the global economy.

According to activist Helena Nordberg-Hodge, “we are talking about a spiritual awakening that comes form making a connection to others and to nature. This requires us to see the world within us, to experience more consciously the great interdependent web of life, of which we ourselves are among the strands.” Thus, neo-humanism–in essence a fusion of spirituality and humanist rationality–is based on principles of love and respect for all beings, sharing, cooperation and spiritual progress. A stark contrast to economic liberalism’s idea that the most conspicuous human motives are self-interest, competition and hoarding of wealth.

After 23 years as a corporate securities attorney-advising large corporations on securities offerings and mergers and acquisitions – I left my position as partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom because I was disturbed by the game. I realized that the many social ills created by corporations stem directly from corporate law. It dawned on me that the law, in its current form, actually inhibits executives and corporations from being socially responsible. So in June 2000 I quit my job and decided to devote the next phase of my life to making people aware of this problem. My goal is to build consensus to change the law so it encourages good corporate citizenship, rather than inhibiting it.

The provision in the law I am talking about is the one that says the purpose of the corporation is simply to make money for shareholders. Every jurisdiction where corporations operate has its own law of corporate governance. But remarkably, the corporate design contained in hundreds of corporate laws throughout the world is nearly identical. That design creates a governing body to manage the corporation-usually a board of directors-and dictates the duties of those directors. In short, the law creates corporate purpose. That purpose is to operate in the interests of shareholders. In Maine, where I live, this duty of directors is in Section 716 of the business corporation act, which reads:

…the directors and officers of a corporation shall exercise their powers and discharge their duties with a view to the interests of the corporation and of the shareholders….

Although the wording of this provision differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, its legal effect does not. This provision is the motive behind all corporate actions everywhere in the world. Distilled to its essence, it says that the people who run corporations have a legal duty to shareholders, and that duty is to make money. Failing this duty can leave directors and officers open to being sued by shareholders.

Section 716 dedicates the corporation to the pursuit of its own self-interest (and equates corporate self-interest with shareholder self-interest). No mention is made of responsibility to the public interest. Section 716 and its counterparts explain two things. First, they explain why corporations find social issues like human rights irrelevant–because they fall outside the corporation’s legal mandate. Second, these provisions explain why executives behave differently than they might as individual citizens, because the law says their only obligation in business is to make money.

This design has the unfortunate side effect of largely eliminating personal responsibility. Because corporate law generally regulates corporations but not executives, it leads executives to become inattentive to justice. They demand their subordinates “make the numbers,” and pay little attention to how they do so. Directors and officers know their jobs, salaries, bonuses, and stock options depend on delivering profits for shareholders.

Companies believe their duty to the public interest consists of complying with the law. Obeying the law is simply a cost. Since it interferes with making money, it must be minimized-using devices like lobbying, legal hairsplitting, and jurisdiction shopping. Directors and officers give little thought to the fact that these activities may damage the public interest.

Lower-level employees know their livelihoods depend upon satisfying superiors’ demands to make money. They have no incentive to offer ideas that would advance the public interest unless they increase profits. Projects that would serve the public interest–but at a financial cost to the corporation–are considered naive.

Corporate law thus casts ethical and social concerns as irrelevant, or as stumbling blocks to the corporation’s fundamental mandate. That’s the effect the law has inside the corporation. Outside the corporation the effect is more devastating. It is the law that leads corporations to actively disregard harm to all interests other than those of shareholders. When toxic chemicals are spilled, forests destroyed, employees left in poverty, or communities devastated through plant shutdowns, corporations view these as unimportant side effects outside their area of concern. But when the company’s stock price dips, that’s a disaster. The reason is that, in our legal framework, a low stock price leaves a company vulnerable to takeover or means the CEO’s job could be at risk.
In the end, the natural result is that corporate bottom line goes up, and the state of the public good goes down. This is called privatizing the gain and externalizing the cost.

This system design helps explain why the war against corporate abuse is being lost, despite decades of effort by thousands of organizations. Until now, tactics used to confront corporations have focused on where and how much companies should be allowed to damage the public interest, rather than eliminating the reason they do it. When public interest groups protest a new power plant, mercury poisoning, or a new big box store, the groups don’t examine the corporations’ motives. They only seek to limit where damage is created (not in our back yard) and how much damage is created (a little less, please).
But the where-and-how-much approach is reactive, not proactive. Even when corporations are defeated in particular battles, they go on the next day, in other ways and other places, to pursue their own private interests at the expense of the public.

I believe the battle against corporate abuse should be conducted in a more holistic way. We must inquire why corporations behave as they do, and look for a way to change these underlying motives. Once we have arrived at a viable systemic solution, we should then dictate the terms of engagement to corporations, not let them dictate terms to us.
We must remember that corporations were invented to serve mankind. Mankind was not invented to serve corporations. Corporations in many ways have the rights of citizens, and those rights should be balanced by obligations to the public.

Many activists cast the fundamental issue as one of “corporate greed,” but that’s off the mark. Corporations are incapable of a human emotion like greed. They are artificial beings created by law. The real question is why corporations behave as if they are greedy. The answer is the design of corporate law.
We can change that design. We can make corporations more responsible to the public good by amending the law that says the pursuit of profit takes precedence over the public interest. I believe this can best be achieved by changing corporate law to make directors personally responsible for harms done.

Let me give you a sense of how director responsibility works in the current system. Under federal securities laws, directors are held personally liable for false and misleading statements made in prospectuses used to sell securities. If a corporate prospectus contains a material falsehood and investors suffer damage as a result, investors can sue each director personally to recover the damage. Believe me, this provision grabs the attention of company directors. They spend hours reviewing drafts of a prospectus to ensure it complies with the law. Similarly, everyone who works on the prospectus knows that directors’ personal wealth is at stake, so they too take great care with accuracy.

That’s an example of how corporate behavior changes when directors are held personally responsible. Everyone in the corporation improves their game to meet the challenge. The law has what we call an in terrorem effect. Since the potential penalties are so severe, directors err on the side of caution. While this has not eliminated securities fraud, it has over the years reduced it to an infinitesimal percentage of the total capital raised.

I propose that corporate law be changed in a similar manner–to make individuals responsible for seeing that the pursuit of profit does not damage the public interest.
To pave the way for such a change, we must challenge the myth that making profits and protecting the public interest are mutually exclusive goals. The same was once said about profits and product quality, before Japanese manufacturers taught us otherwise. If we force companies to respect the public interest while they make money, business people will figure out how to do both.

The specific change I suggest is simple: add 26 words to corporate law and thus create what I call the “Code for Corporate Responsibility.” In Maine, this would mean amending section 716 to add the following clause. Directors and officers would still have a duty to make money for shareholders, … but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, the public safety, the communities in which the corporation operates or the dignity of its employees.

This simple amendment would effect a dramatic change in the underlying mechanism that drives corporate malfeasance. It would make individuals responsible for the damage companies cause to the public interest, and would be enforced much the same way as securities laws are now. Negligent failure to abide by the code would result in the corporation, its directors, and its officers being liable for the full amount of the damage they cause. In addition to civil liability, the attorney general would have the right to criminally prosecute intentional acts. Injunctive relief-which stops specific behaviors while the legal process proceeds-would also be available.

Compliance would be in the self-interest of both individuals and the company. No one wants to see personal assets subject to a lawsuit. Such a prospect would surely temper corporate managers’ willingness to make money at the expense of the public interest. Similarly, investors tend to shy away from companies with contingent liabilities, so companies that severely or repeatedly violate the Code for Corporate Responsibility might see their stock price fall or their access to capital dry up.

Many would say such a code could never be enacted. But they’re mistaken. I take heart from a 2000 Business Week/Harris Poll that asked Americans which of the following two propositions they support more strongly:

Corporations should have only one purpose–to make the most profit for their shareholders–and pursuit of that goal will be best for America in the long run.

–or–

Corporations should have more than one purpose. They also owe something to their workers and the communities in which they operate, and they should sometimes sacrifice some profit for the sake of making things better for their workers and communities.

An overwhelming 95 percent of Americans chose the second proposition. Clearly, this finding tells us that our fate is not sealed. When 95 percent of the public supports a proposition, enacting that proposition into law should not be impossible.

If business people resist the notion of legal change, we can remind them that corporations exist only because laws allow them to exist. Without these laws, owners would be fully responsible for debts incurred and damages caused by their businesses. Because the public creates the law, corporations owe their existence as much to the public as they do to shareholders. They should have obligations to both. It simply makes no sense that society’s most powerful citizens have no concern for the public good.

It also makes no sense to endlessly chase after individual instances of corporate wrongdoing, when that wrongdoing is a natural result of the system design. Corporations abuse the public interest because the law tells them their only legal duty is to maximize profits for shareholders. Until we change the law of corporate governance, the problem of corporate abuse can never fully be solved.

Robert Hinkley rchinkley@media2.hypernet.com , formerly a partner at the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom , now lives in Brooklin, Maine and is working to promote the Code. A Minnesota grassroots group has formed to work on the code (see www.C4CR.org Other information on the Code can be found at www.CitizenWorks.org Reprinted with permission from Business Ethics www.business-ethics.com

The current global political and economic climate is imbalanced and unstable. Western democracies, while philosophically guided by the principles of modernism (equality, fraternity, and liberty) are often not emphasizing the same principles when global economic policies are drafted.

More precisely, the globalization forces promote political democracy while often using undemocratic means when dictating economic policies. Driven by the profit-hungry forces of neo-liberalism, or economic globalization, policies set in the West–through institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)–have often bypassed local democratic institutions and proven to be economically counterproductive and devastating to the so-called developing nations. “Theirs is not an ideology of freedom and democracy,” writes William Finnegan in Harper’s magazine. “It is a system of control. It is an economics of empire.”

Even in countries with a tradition of political democracy, such as in South East Asia, and in South America, the neo-liberal policies have often been economically disastrous. Argentina, for example–for a long time the poster-child of economic globalization–is today suffering the worst economic crisis in its history. In short, economic democracy is still a far cry for most developing nations. Indeed, economic democracy is also only a dream for millions of poor in the rich Western nations.

As PROUT founder P. R. Sarkar writes, economic democracy is the “birthright of every individual.” To achieve economic democracy–or what author and PROUT activist Dada Maheshvarananda calls “a dynamic economy of the people, by the people and for the people”– economic power must be vested in the hands of local people, not foreign corporate interests.

The Fist of Free Trade

Economic liberalization has now reached all corners of the world, but has yet to take hold in the Middle East. In the days leading up to the Iraq war, President George Bush drew several rather surprising links between the need for free trade liberalizations and a “free Iraq.” Here is a quote from a National Press Conference:

” I appreciate societies in which people can express their opinion. That society — free speech stands in stark contrast to Iraq. Secondly, I’ve seen all kinds of protests since I’ve been the President. I remember the protests against trade. A lot of people didn’t feel like free trade was good for the world. I completely disagree. I think free trade is good for both wealthy and impoverished nations. But that didn’t change my opinion about trade. As a matter of fact, I went to the Congress to get trade promotion authority out. ”

No surprise then that free trade and the messianic vision of market fundamentalism was an important part of The National Security Strategy of the United States, issued by the White House in September 2002. “We will actively work to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to every corner of the world,” the Strategy claims. “The possibility that the Marines and high altitude bombers might need to be involved in spreading the good news about free trade does not, in context, seem far-fetched,” writes Finnegan.

No, it does not seem far-fetched. As New York Times columnist and economic globalization advocate Tom Friedman wrote in his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree:

“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas… And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.”

In other words, the war against Iraq was more about fostering the freedom to make a profit on hamburgers than about finding WMD’s. It was more about McWorld vs. Jihad than it was about Bush vs. Saddam.

Free trade and corporate globalization–whichever way it is implemented–has not, however, been a boon for the world’s developing countries. While the US and Europe has increased its wealth, most people in developing nations have become poorer. Indeed, even the IMF recently reported that their policies have failed in lifting these countries out of poverty. Even in the US, globalization has had negative effects on peoples income. Real wages have fallen 4 percent since 1973, while economic growth has averaged 3 percent. In contrast, during the decades prior to globalization–between 1947 and 1973–economic growth averaged 4 percent and wages increased by 63 percent. So, why should Iraq celebrate a future designed by the warriors and free traders in Washington?

Now that the high altitude bombers have finished their work in Iraq, and the US promises the “liberated” Iraqi people that they will soon bask in the glory of democracy, this promise does of course not include the promise of economic democracy. For free market fundamentalism and real-life economic democracy are not mutually inclusive. Just ask the people of Bolivia. Although rich in natural resources, it is the poorest country in South America. Why? Most of the resources are utilized by foreign corporations. “The World Bank is the government of Bolivia,” a Bolivian newspaper editor claims. So, how can the US promise Iraq what the Washington strategists cannot even provide millions of its own citizens, not to speak of the impoverished people in the third world?

A “free Iraq” must therefore not only mean the political freedom to vote, but also freedom from poverty, and the freedom to choose the path of economic self-sufficiency. A truly liberated people should be able to exercise both political and economic democracy. Most of all they should feel secure that no foreign economic power can dictate their economic future–that they are not victims of the “dictatorship” of foreign economic powers.

There are many stated and unstated reasons behind the US-led coalition’s war against Iraq. Most of those reasons–to protect US national self-interest, to prevent future attacks by Iraq and other terrorists, to stop the proliferation of the not-yet-proven Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, to ensure US geopolitical control of the Middle East, and to ensure trade liberalization in the region–do not meet the high moral aim of simply liberating the Iraqi people from an unjust tyranny.

The economic sanctions will soon be lifted so that Iraq, and thus the whole Middle East, can open up for the commercial and cultural hegemony of Western corporations. Aid will also be flowing in. And with this aid, for the hungry and painful bodies of Iraq, will also come aid for their souls. The Messianic message of Billy Graham, his son, and many other Christian evangelical preachers will soon be heard all over the dusty towns of this ancient, Muslim country. For, as there is a holy alliance between McDonald’s and McDonnel Douglas, there is also a holy alliance between US-born capitalism and Born Again Christians, between fundamentalist Christendom and fundamentalist economics.

World Government and Economic Democracy

Unfortunately, we have a UN without a spine and a global economic system without a soul. What we need instead is a World Government with a militia, and a global economic system that fosters economic democracy, or people’s democracy.

As the civilizational and economic conflict between the North and the South, between the rich and the poor, increases, there will be a growing need for both a World Government and for economic democracy. The people of the world will soon be tired of the US operating as the World’s Cop. There will thus be demands for a world authority governing from a higher moral ground than both the UN and, especially, the US is currently operating on. In the words of philosopher Ken Wilber:

” My own belief is that, in the coming century, we will see the present United Nations peacefully replaced by the first move toward a genuine World Federation, driven particularly by threats to the global commons that cannot be handled on a national level (such as terrorism, global monetary and economic policy, and environmental threats to the global commons).”
” This would mean, for example,” writes Wilber, “that America is allowed to despise Iraq (in the privacy of its own…national, cultural space). America is not, however, allowed to attack Iraq.”

What are some of the benefits of a World Federation or World Government? Sarkar suggests four main benefits:

1. The huge expenses of maintaining a militia in each country will be reduced, and these savings can be used to benefit people’s needs.

2. There will be a great reduction in psychological tension.

3. There will be less bloodshed.

4. There will be free movement of people from one corner of the globe to the other.

While Wilber has been primarily preoccupied with blueprinting the cultural and political landscape fostering a more benign world, Sarkar has also mapped its economic aspects. Sarkar believed that political democracy cannot fulfill all “the hopes and aspirations of people or provide the basis for constructing a strong and healthy human society. For this the only solution is to establish economic democracy.”

According to Sarkar, the following guidelines are needed to establish economic democracy:

–The minimum requirements of life must be guaranteed to all. The minimum requirements of a particular age — including food, clothing, housing, education and medical care — should be guaranteed to all.

–Increasing purchasing power must be guaranteed to each and every individual.

–Local people will control economic power, consequently local raw materials will be used to promote the economic prosperity of the local people. This will create industries based on locally available raw materials and ensure full employment for all local people.

–Outsiders must be strictly prevented from interfering in the local economy. The outflow of local capital must be stopped by strictly preventing outsiders or a floating population from participating in any type of economic activity in the local area.”

Paul Hawken, an author whose writings and talks envisions a world of economic democracy, cultural vitality and ecological sustainability, was recently asked by a journalist: “Aren’t you just dreaming?” He replied: “Absolutely I’m dreaming; somebody’s got to dream in America.” Indeed, somebody’s got to dream of a better future, and not just in America, in all countries of the world.

So, in the spirit of Paul Hawken, Ken Wilber and P. R. Sarkar, let us all dream. Let us all dream of a better future for Iraq, and a better future for the world.

It should be noted that the UN does not have a very successful track record in nation-building or peacekeeping in the region, but if it is to be effective in Iraq, such a path must include the following:

1. The immediate end of all economic sanctions against Iraq.

2. A large-scale economic aid packet must immediately start to flow in to Iraq from the global community of nations.

3. The Iraqi oil industry should be allowed to continue as a nationalized enterprise Profits from the oil industry should be used to help build up Iraq’s infrastructure, including government, schools, hospitals, roads, police, etc.

4. The oil industry is a high profit but low labor intensive industry. It is therefore important that profits from the nationalized oil industry will benefit other high labor intensive sectors of the Iraqi economy, such as farming and industry.

5. All peoples, including the Iraqis, need economic democracy to secure their fundamental economic and educational needs. Thus no foreign nation or interests should be allowed to dictate the exploitation of the natural resources of Iraq.

6. The model for political democracy in Iraq should be based on Iraqi interests and conditions, not US interests, nor any other Western interests. While Iraq may learn from other countries, the West should not be allowed to dictate a political model for Iraq, be it the “Japanese post-WW2 model,” or the Turkish “secular Muslim model.”

7. Religious freedom and tolerance is a prerequisite for peace and a successful democracy. Thus, while political dialogues continue to flourish within the Mosque-system, it is paramount that no religious dogma or faction of Islam is allowed to dominate the political discourse in Iraq.

8. A federation of autonomous Kurdish areas should be set up in the four neighboring states, Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, without splitting these countries up. In that way, the Kurds could both have a Kurdish passport and a passport from the country in which they would belong. If, at a later stage, the Kurds would opt for independence, it should be granted.

9. Economic, political and cultural cooperation between Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan and Egypt, with open borders for tourism, trade, culture and economy is a must for the future peace of the region. Iraq could be an associated partner of this cooperation.

10. Conflicts in the region should be handled in a constructive way, with equal respect and cooperation, not with treats and attacks.

Answer: There are several benefits and advantages: The huge expense of maintaining a militia in each country will be saved and this saving can be used by people for their benefit. Human beings will be saved from psychic tension. There will be less bloodshed. There will be free movement of people from one corner of the globe to the other.

10 December 1987, Calcutta
From “Questions and answers”
Prout in a nutshell 12
—
Many people say that different national interests are the only hurdle in the formation of a world government. In my opinion this is not the only obstruction; rather, this is just a minor difficulty. The real cause lies in the fear of local leaders losing their leadership. With the establishment of a world government the powerful influence, which they enjoy today in different countries, societies and in national life, will no longer exist.

Different national interests and popular skepticism may hinder the formation of a world government. The progress of this work must be carried on step by step to remove the baseless fears in the human minds. Besides, due consideration will have to be given to removing any possible obstacles to the formation of a world government. The world government has to be strengthened step by step and not suddenly.

For example, two houses may be formed for an unspecified period for administration. The lower house will comprise representatives from parts of the world elected on the basis of population, while members of the upper house will be elected country wise. By this arrangement those countries which cannot send a single representative to the lower house due to their small population, will benefit by expressing their opinions before the people of the world by sending their representatives to the upper house. The upper house cannot adopt any resolution unless the lower house has ratified it, but it will enjoy the privilege of disallowing the decisions of the lower house.

In the first stage, this world government may act only as a law framing body. The world government will be vested with framing the rights of implementation or non-implementation of any particular law in any particular region. In the beginning when the world government is being established, the government of different countries will have only administrative power. As they will not have any power to enact any laws arbitrarily; it will not be easy for any government to inflict atrocities on its linguistic, religious, or political minorities according to the whims of the governing majority.

From Problems of the day
26 January 1958, Bhagalpur

Humanity is said to have made tremendous progress today because life seems so much more comfortable these days then it was a few centuries ago. Nowadays people can travel fast by land and air, whereas only a hundred years ago they were traveling by horse-drown bogeys and bullock carts. If we go back to ancient times, people had to travel on foot. This progress is commonly understood as an increase in living comforts through scientific inventions, which have eased our lives not only physically but also mentally. The invention of paper has helped spread scholarly ideas. People can now engage their minds reading novels and other literature. The Internet is another case in point, having put exchange of ideas and gathering of information at the fingertips of all. Scientific discoveries may be credited with tremendous advance that humanity has made in the physical and intellectual realm.

All this, according to Prout, is not progress. To be sure, it has resulted in a great change in the mode of living, but it is not progress because most scientific discoveries have created problems which were non-existence before or which have increased proportionally with the various material or intellectual developments. Faster travel today has increased the risk of accident; industrialization has resulted in environmental pollution and cancer and other diseases unheard of in the past, as modern medicines quickly cures the malady but generates side-effects requiring further treatment. Even in the intellectual sphere, there is much available to keep the mind occupies, but people today suffer from emotional problems and neuroses that did not afflict them before. And a momentous invention like the Internet is surely a mighty river of and and important carrier of information but it is also a cesspool of negative influence and even dangerous addiction to some.

Increased comforts in physical and intellectual spheres have been accompanied by deleterious side-effects, and who is to say that progress has really occurred in these realms. Indeed, Sarkar goes as far as saying that progress in the intellectual and physical sense is impossible unless there occurs a spiritual advance at the same time – unless they support spiritual development. In other words, the term progress in the intellectual and physical spheres is a misnomer.

Why cannot progress occur in the physical and intellectual arenas? Why must any positive development on these levels be associated with a negative movement? The reason lies in the very nature of the universe which exists in a vibrational flow balanced by positive and negative forces.

Physical development

Our Earth and the atmosphere surrounding it are finite. Any positive wave in these finite realms will have to be counterbalanced by a negative wave. Therefore, any invention creating a positive wave of physical comfort is matched by a corresponding negative wave leading to discomfort. In view of the interdependent nature of the physical world, it is not surprising that the results of new technology will be exactly counterbalanced by a side-effect. Therefore if life becomes easier in some respects, it will become harder in others. No one can laud science and technology as anything else but a mixed blessing.

Prout’s claim that progress is impossible in the physical realm is very strong indeed. It seems to be incredible but it has an internal logic of its own. And today, with the constructive and destructive fruits of science visible in all directions, this logic has become manifestly clear. Can you think of any invention which while reproducing life’s boredom has not added to life’s danger at the same time? Repetitive work is drudgery; when machine can do that work life becomes more pleasant than before. If dishwashers do our dishes, air-conditioners temperate our rooms, laundry machines clean our clothes, cars do our walking and so on, life certainly appears blissful relative to what our forefathers had to endure in a less scientific world. But then they did not have to cope with electric shocks, fatal accidents, urban congestion, super-selfishness, crime and so on.

Indeed the harm done by an invention varies directly with its promises of comfort. Coal results in smoke pollution and so does oil. Nuclear power has none of this and is one vast reservoir of power. But when problems first come in a nuclear plant they may be many times deadlier and more catastrophic than traditional sources of energy. You can move away from the pollution of oil and coal but from nuclear radiation there is no escape. It follows you wherever you go.

Today solar energy holds greater promise than nuclear plants. That is because its dangers are not yet known. Every scientific device conceals invisible dangers that become apparent much later. When utilizing new technology, we do not expect any trouble from it. This is faulty logic and very short term thinking.

Sarkar corrects this thinking by saying that the side effects of every invention are inevitable, because the universe is finite, and vibrational in nature, and any physical change producing comfort must be counter-balanced by an equivalent physical change producing misery.

Does it mean that science should be discarded? Not at all. With our overwhelming problems concerning energy, population and pollution, our relapse to pre-science days is unthinkable. All it means is that we have to be more cautious about inventions. Before translating any new invention into industrial technology, its side-effects should be thoroughly studies, and investments should simultaneously be made in controlling its emissions.

Mental development

While the concept of progress in the material sphere is at best dubious, things are not better in the intellectual sphere. The world seems to have greatly advanced in the realm of the intellect. There are more scholars today than ever before. People with M.A. and Ph.D. abound in many nations, and many more are habituated to regular reading and writing. But has all this occurred without a cost?

People in ancient times were intellectually backward, but they did not suffer from emotional stress and neuroses. One who is less scholarly is also less prone to mental disturbances, whereas an intellectual is highly vulnerable in this regard. He or she creates unnecessary problems in his own world of imaginations and experiences sleepless nights. Hence in the intellectual sphere also, progress is unlikely, if not impossible, because the feeling of increased pleasure is likely to be balanced by one of increasing trouble and pain. The barometer of progress in the ultimate analysis must be mental pleasure, which is really nothing but a mental vibration emitted by relaxed nerves. On the other end, pain is just an opposite experience. When the nerves are under tension, the vibration generated in the mind is called pain. In the evaluating the impact of science, people usually focus on the conveniences it has provided, while ignoring the nervous tensions it has created in our lives. The fact that progress is not possible in the material sphere only means that the scientific change increases both pleasures and pain in the same proportions.

The same holds true with intellectual activity as well. In most states, mind experiences wither pleasure or pain. There may be cases of mental repression of mental denial of either comforting or discomforting things, but such mental stated do not last long. Generally, mind is either happy or unhappy. The intellectual activity undoubtedly increases the feeling of pleasure. A person who has won an argument over another is usually very happy and sometimes delirious with joy. But after a while, he will experience a corresponding amount of pain in some other aspect of his or her mind. The reason is that the human mind has a certain mass and volume. Purely intellectual study and analysis fail to enhance its mass. All they do is to increase the activity and play of ideas into a given intellectual arena. With a greater number of thoughts criss-crossing a given mental field, the result inevitably is increased clash in the mind. Hence occurs the mental breakdown. hence the neuroses. Hence the growing need of psychiatrists in the intellectually developed societies.

True progress

Is the progress possible at all? The answer is yes. Human existence has three aspects–physical, mental and spiritual. While the first two aspects are not amenable to progress, the third is. Increased happiness in that sphere is not neutralized by increased misery.

While physical and intellectual activities deal with the limited, spirituality is concerned with the unlimited. Hence the goal in the spiritual arena is not finite but infinite. Therefore, the feeling of pleasure resulting from spiritual activity is not accompanied by pain, or happiness by misery. This then is true progress. In the spiritual experience there is no negative movement, no reaction. For every effort there is a forward march unaccompanied by any deleterious side-effects.

Spiritual activities include meditation and selfless living. Without providing help to the needy, the forward movement towards the infinite is impossible. And since mind’s goal is infinitude, the spiritual life results in an expansion in the volume as well as the mass of mind. As a result, the mental conflict declines, and the nerves get relaxation. The person becomes broadminded. He or she seeks to serve others, to share in their pains. A community which respects the selfless beings and attempts to emulate them, experiences increased happiness without corresponding pain. That is when true progress occurs in the entire society. The degree of selflessness, therefore, is the true gauge of society’s progress, and not the material development, or its intellectual attainments.

While real progress is unlikely in the material and mental sphere, Prout does not advocate that scientific and intellectual pursuits be abandoned. On the contrary, Prout is the champion of science, art and literature. Sarkar insists, however, that scientific advances should be “spiritualized”; they should be accompanied by spiritual practices for such practices enable us to gain increasing mastery over our body and mind. All detrimental effects of scientific and intellectual developments on the human organism can thus be brought under control.

The introduction of new technology increases the pace of life. More decisions than before have to be made in a relatively short span of time; one has to move fast from place to place in order to cope with the speed of the machines. All this adversely affects the nerves, and in turn puts stress on the brain and the heart. Heart failures and mental agonies are the inevitable byproducts of science and technology. Spiritual practices, which calm the nerves, are therefore indispensable if we intend to master science and not be mastered by it.

Prout’s concept of progress has profound implications for humanity. It suggests that scientific change and intellectual transformation, unaccompanied by spiritual advance, would lead only to degradation in the physical arena such as our environment but also to racism, bigotry, and social conflicts. Spirituality is the foundation of all progress. During the 20th century, thousands of remarkable inventions and new theories have almost totally transformed our way of life. There is no indication that this trend will slow down, rather we expect accelerated movement in all spheres of life. However, at the present we have spiritually stagnated and even moved backwards. Consequently, battles and wars have been deadlier in the 20th century than ever before. Rising greed, crime, drugs and environmental pollution threaten to overwhelm the delicate thread of life on our finite planet. The moral is that change in the physical and mental sphere, without spiritual advance, is ultimately self-destructive.

This postmodern moment perhaps captured the angst of the conference. This angst was a mixture of: (1) calls for more basic science and textbooks for students; science that better reflects the basic human needs of food, shelter, energy; and science that is self-sustaining and independent of external monies or models; (2) Big Western science that could develop new laser, informatic and nuclear technologies; and (3) science that better reflects the worldview of Islam.

Amidst all the calls for transformation, even by individuals who had been at the helm of the scientific establishment for the last twenty years, it was clear that science in Muslim nations, particularly Pakistan, had taken many wrong turns. Even the correct turns had turned out disastrously because of policy commitments towards Big Science. While nations like Malaysia focused on products that had commercial gain or ensured the reduction of the power of the feudal class, most Muslim nations remain committed to wars, both imaginary and real, with neighbours.

Instead of developing commercial science or local science that could meet basic needs and create better health conditions for women and children, nuclear strategies and Big Science were paramount. The costs for Muslim nations are now quite evident – a terrifying low literacy rate, low numbers of graduates and high malnutrition, to mention a few obvious indicators. The effects of colonialism, external and internal, seem to remain, as do pre-Islamic dynastic battles.

In the midst of the utter failure of Big Science and Western science, there have been calls for Islamic science. Islamic science was originally meant to unleash creativity, to recover the traditional categories of tawheed (unity), ilm (knowledge) and khalifa (humans as trustees) of a science based on an alternative worldview, one that was not modernist in orientation, ie., framed around the values of the nation-state, reductionism, methodological individualism, materialism, and military expansionism.

However, Islamic science in Pakistan during the political terror of the 1980s came to mean science focused on legitimating itself through the categories of the Islamic ontological position. Thus, it was argued that relativity theory and big bang theory all had their roots in the Quran. This fusing of the eternal with the temporal is problematic for numerous reasons.

First, science is based on changing boundaries of knowledge. If evidence changes as it did from the Newtonian to the Quantum worldview, what then of the Quran?

In addition, the attempt at fusion wrongly concludes that knowledge should branch out of the Quran, not conclude in the Quran. Focused on ilm, the Islamic world view is an invitation to thought and reflection, but not when it is based on dying or dead modernist categories from nationalism. The fusion of Islamic ontology with Islamic science led to attempts to mathematize the inspirational, the sublime, leading to bad science and bad religion.

This is not to say that the Quran does not give clues of an alternative worldview more balanced in its ontology, one where reality, for example, might consist simultaneously of material and non-material factors.

The conference eventually did move forward, even if reviewers damned it without attending it or reviewing Conference papers. In addition to developing a critique of Western science and not acceding to an entirely cultural definition of Islamic science, the conference touched upon the politics of policy-making. Science was not seen merely as a desire to know, but as a system of thought. And it was seen as an enterprise, one where individual scientists have little control over the larger process of what they discover, do, and how they do it. In this sense, science is cultural and civilisational. A non-Western science, like a non-Western theory of development, would be less committed to the alliance between capital, nation and science and imagine instead a science that empowered individuals and solved local problems even as it tried to become universal.

Unfortunately, not enough was said about practical examples of an alternative science. Instead the critique of the West was done not only against the backdrop of “Best Western” but against the history of Muslim glories. One participant even argued that science can be done only by believers, with non-Muslims unable to conduct true science.

Fortunately for most, Islam was a moral space, a pluralistic and tolerant one that provided a defense against modernity. But this moral space is constantly under threat as instrumental rationality leads to Muslim money going not for Third World local development but to speculative markets. It is this form of rationality that does not allow for the creation of a true community.

The West has thus become ubiquitous; Muslims have internalized it, even going so far as to assume that science is value-free, acultural and apolitical. Revivalist or fundamentalist Islam thus is not a creative response to this modernist self but a reaction that merely reinforces the values of the West. The endeavour for true Islamic science, in contrast, would ask whether a different science can be created, with different research questions and different ways of working together. Islamic science, like Western science, however, would claim to be universal, with results repeatable.

While delegates debated the positions of Islamic science, Western science, Islamic ontology and the world political economy which frames who gets what, recent technologies promise to transform the ground of this debate.

For example, genetic engineering threatens to soon transform the private space of our individual genes to public space, where they can be bought and sold. Not only will plants and other resources be patented by the technologically advanced – so will our very selves.

Not only will the natural be under threat, the conventional view of Reality – considered stable for centuries – is being undermined as well. Virtual reality, epistemological deconstruction and cultural melange all challenge the view that there is an essential or permanent reality.

Computer developments will soon make it difficult to discern what is created and what is natural. The view of the world of Man as the centre of all things is equally contentious, with challenges from feminist and other perspectives that remind us that plants, animals and robots (technologies) have equal demand on our conceptual space.

Finally, sovereignty has become riddled with holes, and God, nation, and self all appear far more undefined than they have for centuries. Though how these transformations will play themselves out cannot be predicted, they do promise a postmodern world in which we will all be strangers. For Muslims and others committed to spiritual perspectives of reality and others who live and work on the margins of industrialism and neo-realism – the social movements, the indigenous peoples – the world is already, however, unfamiliar.

The post-decolonisation project has been to transform Western reality, or at least to create spaces of familiarity and recover historical categories silenced by modernization. This conflicts with national projects, which have been more focused on industrialising within the context of Western liberalism or socialism. In practice, Islamic science and elites continue to be guided by models of reality that promise more, larger, and grander – all at the expense of the cooperative, the communal and the local. Nor do we creatively appropriate foreign-origin new visions of science.

Islamic science, or non-Western science in general is about creating new universal and inclusive models. They are committed to ethical spaces and action in a world where difference is far more captivating than similarity. However, to survive – for postmodernism does not sufficiently challenge unequal power relations and center-periphery distinctions – an agreed global ethic must be posited.

Once the natural, the real, the human, and the sovereign have been made relative, what will the new guiding ethic be? Islamic science and other non-Western projects lay claim to this future, arguing that colonisation has allowed them to creatively internalize the West and thus create a critical traditionalism that can move the planet forward.

The conference began debate of these issues, and concluded by discussion of a specific science policy in Muslim nations. Clearly a transformation in science policy at the very top would be ideal, and include a commitment to science and technology, basic education, and literacy. Specifically this would mean scholarships, creating science cities (suggested by Anwar Nasim of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences) and targeting areas that Pakistan could excel in. This would not be the nuclear war program but would be solar and focus on softer energies systems wherein an Islamic science could flourish.

An Islamic science would also create a science consciousness – a mentality of inquiry, the search for knowledge (spiritual and physical) and using tradition to create a new future, not one that transfers the past to the present.

But this level of grandness is unlikely. Muslim nations remain in various vicious cycles of feudalism, anti-Indianism, and politics-as-staying-in-power rather than social responsiveness. Western science has fit perfectly into that paradigm. Still, finding ways for scientists to work together, increasing funding, initiating pilot projects, and other steps are all important. As Foucault reminded us, power is everywhere, even at small levels, and minor changes during periods of crisis can lead to massive transformations. As complexity and chaos theory asserts, we live in a world of many interactions and numerous loops, and by the appropriate pressure on some of these points a great deal is possible.

But merely calling for more of this or that will not do. Bureaucracies continue because they ossify languages that succeed, ensuring policies that fail. We might not have a solution to the angst of shrinking moral space, but certainly an alternative science and model of development cannot be any worse than the tragedy of the last few hundred years.