At its root, economics is about properly and sustainably managing a household. Or, more poetically, about taking care of our home. This is not news to anyone of course, but perhaps what has gone relatively unexamined is what we mean by home, and how our understanding of this concept ought to feed into economics.
Various thinkers observe an expansion of
humanity’s sense of home from Hearth to Earth. While I suspect the spiritual journeys
in trance of hunter gatherers and other so-called uncivilized folk were cosmic
in scope, generally speaking this observation is a valid one. Further, while it
is true that as our home grows to become an entire planet some see as a living
being, it shrinks too as distance is bested by the speed of technological
development. As this brings us together, cultural differences are exposed, and our
inability to talk and listen to each other across cultural divides fuels
tensions that too often precede war. Ironically, though different cultures may
all see the entire planet as our home, though it is clear to us all that if we
fail to live with our home wisely we will perish, this shared wisdom is
insufficient to foster cooperation of sufficient breadth and depth. This
problem is evident both across and within borders, even within families.
Perhaps the reason for this is that we
have, as a thinking species, not sufficiently understood what home is about, or
not allowed space for what we know in our institutions.
Home is not about glory, glamour and
fame, it is not size and ostentation, it is not competitive advantage securing
conspicuous prosperity for you and those you favour. Home is love. Love of
life, of others, of planet, of self, not as vanity, not as narcissism, but with
humility, courage, creativity, generosity of spirit, wisdom and faith. Were
home truly about the former, truly about vanity and ostentation, it would
generate dysfunctional families, discord, an insatiable emptiness in the soul, a
feeling of non-belonging, a constant hunger to consume anything and everything
that distracts to keep the pain of that emptiness at bay. Such a state of being
is not home, nor can it arise from home; it is a spiritual and
psychological diaspora of isolated individuals. Civilisation has generated an ‘economics’
of perpetual and atomised diaspora. In other words, economics is not economics; it is a conceptual
construct that perpetuates homelessness in pursuit of more and more numbers and
total control of nature. Orthodox ‘economics’destroys home.
If we experience this as a problem, what
we can sure of is that a way out will not be found in more of the same. I have
come to connect love with economics. I have come to see that love must be
foundational to our thinking and doing if we are to create an economics worthy
of the name.
