Enlightened Selfish-Actualisation
Hierarchy of Creeds
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”
Leonardo da Vinci
Economic nun-sense
Monks, huh?...nuns?
An absolute and utter disgrace. Nightmare.
Economically speaking, that is.
My goodness…chanting? Costless. Praying and meditation? Unquantifiable and, therefore, untaxable. Reading and writing? Simply free. Subsistence farming? No electricity? No subscriptions? No fast-moving consumer goods, mobile telephone “plans” and no pop-up adverts, throwaway plastic?
Monastic behaviour is essentially an economic and political horror show that serves to undermine societal per-capita growth.
I don’t know who the hell these people think they are serving (oh, hold on…), but it is certainly not our present-day economy as a whole.
Just as commercially crippling are the ascetic Buddhists, abstemious Hindus, hermitic pagans, Amazonian hunters and anyone else that has countered the GDP-calibrated “greater good” of ever more consumption.
Now, I don’t think anyone reasonable would suggest that these transcendent lifestyles, bereft of so many creature comforts that we have assimilated as essential human needs, are 100% for all of us.
Personally, I am very partial to a spot of central heating in the winter and the occasional takeaway curry. But how about more of us seeking simpler pleasures...edging towards that simpler life?
The question I want to ask is: why are there not more people in this category? Seeking inner contentment. The group above that of “self-esteem” or “status’ in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Self-actualised. Becoming your truest self.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
The Lindy Effect posits that the longer that something has survived, the longer it is likely to survive into the future. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs not only fulfils this definition, but it has consistently proven to be a powerful framework for understanding behaviours and motives.
Just to recap, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a construction that sets out an understanding for human motivation and how we are compelled to focus effort on the next rung on the ladder of flourishing only once we have sufficiently secured the previous step.
Being inherently driven to survive and perpetuate, we will first ensure access to food, water and shelter before then seeking the next level of security against immediate danger.
Sustenance and safety provide the pathway to fulfilment via family, friendships and community.
Existence in this tier represents an echelon of thriving that the vast majority of humanity would have considered attainable only by the truly blessed.
Indeed, absolute poverty is slowly but steadily being eradicated. The tsunami forces of value-enhancing free markets cannot be dammed by artificial governmental constructions of taxes, laws and regulations. Humans act. Act to increase their flourishing, in particular for their children.
Large populations have, for the first time, the opportunity to breathe a sigh of relief and look up from their daily struggle for survival to contemplate what might be next. Food and safety are finally sufficiently secure to be able to make judgments about how to act.
Of the over 8 billion of us, ever more are being funnelled up to the next level of the pyramid.
However, fewer and fewer are reaching the end goal of self-actualisation.
A greater proportion is compressed, penned in the GDP-maximising quest for self-esteem. Status.
The university-uneducated measure their life-performance more by their job title and accompanying fiat tokens than they do the attainment of their truest selves.
The Holy Infinity
Every known tribe, community, civilisation, human grouping in the history of the planet was centred on a spiritual belief system. There has always been an understanding that there is more to life than the self, the ego…that true fulfilment comes from a preternatural, ineffable something.
Today’s intelligentsia studiously insists on scientism. Clever people only believe in what can be considered “consensus in science” (shudder), stubbornly ignoring the fact that science proves nothing. Rather, it posits the most up-to-date, best explanations. Scientific knowledge is an ever-evolving body of trial and error. Science is an error correction methodology. And traditions are experiments that worked.
“Tradition is tending the flame, not worshipping the ashes” – Gustav Mahler
Current knowledge is not a bad way to go, but by no means the final answer. The rigidly anti-spiritual ignore the supranatural upon which their own beliefs are inevitably constructed. What came before the Big Bang? What is dark matter? What is the meaning of life?!
Scientism is faith in the unknown every bit as much as are spiritual beliefs.
Point?
The free market is the optimal form of human interaction. A willing buyer and a willing seller, with no coercion other than an individual’s preferences will always carry with it the promise of mutual betterment. Where bad actors seek to exploit it for unfair gain, culture acts as the social arbiter of best practice.
Where that culture has broken down (or been dismantled) the vacuum is greedily filled by government. One might argue that government has an incentive to disrupt a successful culture.
Over history, the societies that most succeeded in nursing human flourishing are those that most cohesively drew together around shared moral principles.
So, what is my point?
My suggestion is that our conditioning to spurn spirituality has led to an unnaturally oversized proportion of us being trapped in the zero-sum stage of status-seeking. Whether it be the credentialist education system, academia or stealth propaganda we have been guided to poo-poo talk of the transcendent…the other worldly.
We quantify our societies’ health with an economic measuring tape calibrated in monetary symbols, not genuine personal well-being. In days gone by those successful in free market enterprise would invest in schools, hospitals or community infrastructure. Monetary wealth was converted into genuine philanthropy. Nowadays, such avenues of community enhancement are crowded out by taxes and regulation. There are fewer channels available for the charity-minded to express their benevolent instinct to find happiness through helping others. Rather, today monetary wealth is flaunted as an endpoint. Material items. An Instagram post. A personal brand.
When we collectively worship no god, we wind up worshipping the false god of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Bits of paper. Bytes of bankers’ data.
The self-focussed accumulation of the instantly deletable.
In contrast to the perpetual self-actualisation of living on in the hearts and souls of others.
As, upon our deathbed, we cast a wistful final glance over a lifetime of experiences what will draw our world-wise face into a contented, fulfilled wrinkled smile for that very last time?
“A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.” – Mahatma Gandhi