The Spirit of Wealth-Sustainable? Desirable? Doable?

Date:   4/17/2005 7:27:42 PM ( 19 y ago)

Our capitalist culture and the business practices that operate within it are in crisis. In fact, global business can currently be described as a "monster consuming itself." This definition stems from the fact that the underlying ethos and assumptions of capitalism, and many of the business practices that follow from them, are unsustainable. Capitalism and business as we know them have no long-term future, and therefore limit the future of our culture at large.

However, it is my belief that a critical mass of individuals acting from higher motivations can make a difference. This critical mass of present and potential leaders can use their spiritual intelligence to create spiritual capital in their wider organizational cultures, thereby making those cultures more sustainable. The goal is to generate a capitalism that is itself sustainable and to create a world in which sustainable capitalism can generate wealth that nourishes all human needs.

The key word here is wealth. My own definition of wealth is "that which we have access to that enhances the quality of life." We often refer to an individual's "wealth of talent," wealth of character," or "wealth of good fortune." The world itself comes form the Old English welth, meaning "to be well." But the dictionary definition of wealth emphasizes first, "a great quantity or store of money." Capitalism, as we know it, is about money and material wealth.

Spiritual capital, by contrast, is wealth that we can live by, wealth that enriches the deeper aspects of our lives. It is wealth we gain through drawing upon our deepest meanings, deepest values, most fundamental purposes, and highest motivations, and by finding a way to embed these in our lives and work.

Spiritual capital is a vision and a model for organizational and cultural sustainability within a wider framework of community and global concern. It is capital amassed through serving, in both corporate philosophy and practice, the deeper concerns of humanity and the planet. It is capital that reflects our shared values, shared visions, and fundamental purpose in life. Spiritual capital is reflected in what an organization believes in, what it exists for, what it aspires to, and what it takes responsibility for.

My use of the word spiritual in the definition of both spiritual capital and spiritual intelligence has no connection with religion or any other organized belief system. Spiritual intelligence is the intelligence with which we access our deepest meanings, values, purposes, and higher motivations. It is how we use these in our thinking processes, in the decisions that we make, and the things that we think it is worthwhile to do. These decisions include how we make and how we allocate our material wealth.

Spiritual intelligence is our moral intelligence, giving us an innate ability to distinguish right from wrong. It is the intelligence with which we exercise goodness, truth, beauty, and compassion in our lives. It is, if you like, the soul's intelligence, if you think of soul as that channeling capacity in human beings that brings things up from the deeper and richer dimensions of imagination and spirit into our daily lives, organizations and institutions.

There is a crucial link between spiritual intelligence, spiritual capital and sustainability. It can be expressed as follows: We need a sense of meaning and values and a sense of fundamental purpose (spiritual intelligence) in order to build the wealth that these can generate (spiritual capitalism). It is only when our notion of capitalism includes spiritual capital's wealth of meaning, values, purpose, and higher motivation that we can have sustainable capitalism and a sustainable society.

Danah Zohar was born and educated in the United States. She studied Physics and Philosophy at MIT and then did her postgraduate work in Philosophy, Religion & Psychology at Harvard University. She is the author of the best-selling The Quantum Self and The Quantum Society, books that extend the language and principles of quantum physics into a new understanding of human consciousness, psychology and social organization. Ian Marshall is a Jungian-oriented psychiatrist and psychotherapist and the co-author of several of Zohar’s books. He studied Philosophy and Psychology at Oxford University before entering medical school at London University. Excerpted from Spiritual Capital: Wealth We Can Live By by Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall (Berrett-Koehler Pub © 2004).





 

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