“Money prospers. Life withers. We cannot eat, drink, or breathe money. No matter how fat our bank accounts or advanced our technologies, we depend on Earth’s health for food, freshwater, clean air and a stable climate.”  – David C. Korten

In the last decade or so, and certainly since the still stinging recession of 2008, money and the economy have obviously been more present in everyone’s thoughts. Living in a capitalist country, it has always been an important topic for discourse, but it appears to have moved into a new realm lately. Now we are having discussions about the economy and including ideas like morality, inequality, oligarchy and aristocracy. We argue about “The One Percent,” income disparity, socialism and outright socio-political revolutions. Money itself has shifted from being a simple vehicle for exchange of goods, services and property to a device for creating power over people, elections, the fate of nations and the earth itself.

So what else is new? Hasn’t wealth always been the prime vehicle of power? Haven’t aristocracies and the poor existed side by side for as long as there have been organized societies?

It is true that ever since the invention of money there a have been disparities in the possession and control of wealth and with it, power. But a few features of our present era have put the current economic paradigm into a class by itself.

First, one would have thought (or at least hoped) that on the whole, humankind was evolving toward a more equitable state of living and wealth distribution. Not necessarily socialism, or communism, or any other socio/economic/political “-ism”. There is abundance available to all, and it need not be at the cost of stripping successful individuals or organizations of the reward of reasonable wealth. But the scale is more tilted than it ever has been, and that has created a pathologically greedy oligarchy.  Roughly 80 billionaires now control the same amount of wealth as 3.5 billion of the poorest people on earth. They have roughly doubled their wealth since 2009.¹ That is not only unconscionable, it is dangerous.

Second, our financial institutions have created technology that trades and manipulates huge portions of wealth in microseconds. These computerized trading techniques are not programmed to factor in any calculation of human or environmental costs. They are entirely focused on producing maximum profit for an elite few. In less time than it takes to blink, forces can be set in motion that drastically alter other economies, populations and environments. A computer in New York calculates that profit can be made by controlling more shares of a mining operation in Africa, and thousands of poor workers may suffer unknown consequences while the environment is further degraded. Unseen and unconsidered by the privileged “boys club” of Wall Street.

Third, the above two factors (among others) have helped create a societal model and an economic decision making apparatus that is largely controlled by technology and the powers that control wealth and manipulate economies. The human and environmental cost is completely ignored, and the rapid changes in climate, the decline of human health, and the endless state of war are the inevitable result. We have allowed enormously consequential decisions to be made by an invisible and unassailable cartel. We accept actions and policies because we are told they are “good for the economy” and we accept almost all technology as beneficial because it is part of “progress.”

In his largely non-dogmatic, thoroughly insightful and reality centered work, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis writes:

“We have to accept that technological products are not neutral, for they create a framework which ends up conditioning lifestyles and shaping social possibilities along the lines dictated by the interests of certain powerful groups.”²

Are we really so willing to accept the lifestyles and possibilities dictated to us by tech companies working in concert with governments and other businesses to create enormous profit and coalesce power in the hands of a select few? We would do well to consider that carefully.

We can certainly add more factors to the above list, but that is just adding logs to a fire already burning out of control. It is glaring and visible enough, although many choose not to see, and it is entirely likely that we have already gone too far. We may not be able to turn the tide of climate change before it’s too late, or bear the consequences of unsustainable population growth, economically driven wars or the widening gulf between the haves and have nots.

One solution, or at least part of a solution, is offered by the writer David C. Korten, in his excellent book, Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth. Korten quiet correctly points out that humans have always lived according to stories. These stories are the framework for our social structures. Stories provide guides and ideally, moral compasses for decision making and living. Like Jung’s archetypes, Joseph Campbell’s myths, the Aboriginal Dreamtime and even the pantheon of Greek gods, we humans need and value our stories to help us make sense of things.

Korten notes that, as far back as the 1800s, powerful economists pushed to elevate the discipline of economics to the level of influence and intellectual respect enjoyed by “true” sciences like physics. With the aid of businesses and governments that stood to benefit from the acceptance of economics as unassailable science, this effort was enormously successful, and the story of Sacred Money and Markets took hold.³

And so, the story of our current time is one of Sacred Money and Markets, when it needs to be a story of Sacred Life and Living Earth. As the quote at the top of this essay points out, we cannot eat, drink or breathe money.

Sadly, as long as this is the story by which we measure our actions, we are unlikely to make enough progress in handling many, if not most, of the issues that plague our world. The problem is that replacing a global story or paradigm is a slow and arduous process, and it requires not only enormous effort, but willing participation of most of mankind and systemic change at the highest levels. I fear it will get worse before it gets better. But that does not mean we should not endeavor to change the story, In fact, we must.

Yet, in the last year or so, at conferences, presentations, lectures and the like, I keep hearing a lot of talk about letting the markets solve issues like climate change and poverty. There is abundant faith (especially from scientists) that somehow science or technology will invent some process to mitigate the effects of climate change and that ultimately technology will come to the rescue on any number of issues ranging from population control to world hunger.

This is not only incorrect thinking, but dangerous as well. Aren’t these the very forces that got us into this mess in the first place? Relying on an external force like science or technology to save us is an abdication of our own responsibility for our actions. If we allow the oligarchy to continue unrestrained, and if we continue to shop for more devices, more hamburgers and ever bigger houses and cars (thus enabling the oligarchy to get even richer), then we are just kicking the can down the road. Even if science solves the problem of climate change, the central issue of following a flawed paradigm will manifest in some other environmental or humanitarian disaster. Do we really need more proof that the story we have been using as our guide does not work?

So the hard truth is, we need to learn to live differently. It will not happen quickly, and once again, it may get worse before it gets better, but we must do it. The consequences of the next global financial crash, or the next crisis like global warming, are far too severe to contemplate, so we have to begin the change immediately. We have to change the story, and we have to start now.

1. Korten, David C. (2015) Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth Oakland, CA, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
2. Pathe, Simone (2015) The wealthiest are getting wealthier, and lobbying has a lot to do with it. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/wealthiest-getting-wealthier-lobbying-lot/
3. Pope Francis (2015) Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, Huntington, IN, Our Sunday Visitor Publishing