Excellent analysis exposing the emperor as a nudist. Nate Hagens explains how the economic theory still being taught in universities and business schools has given rise to, and continues to exacerbate the multiple crises the world is facing in the twenty first century.
This is a wonderful essay approaching the economics of truth in the natural world. Good economics describes how value works in both egoic and non-egoic life. Some thoughts:
If sanity is objectively observing what is before us, then our scientific, economic, and spiritual education is driving us insane, causing us to confuse Egoic experience with objective or devotional observation.
You're suggesting people aren't rational because we are messy, emotional, deeply social, and care what other people think. Human behavior is rational when we understand 1) Most people do what ego tells them do, and 2) Feeling is an evaluative function as rational as thought. We feel and think what we do for reasons we evaluate against our perception of an unknowable truth. Not all thoughts or feelings are the same. An objective model for humanity considers how we think and feel without ego.
Saying we are "beautifully irrational" is not seeing the rationality behind non-egoic life. For example, a parent caring for a child is not "beautifully irrational," but following a logic ego doesn't understand.
We can discuss each of these economic myths from a non-egoic viewpoint, but we'll leave it here.
Humanity is like a spouse having to suffer an addict/alcoholic mate as they pull the family through hell on the way to the spouse hitting rock bottom and admitting they're powerless before their addiction and life is unmanageable.
Ego helps children grow into beautiful individuals, but adults mature by willfully setting ego aside. We are addicted to our egos and learning the value of setting it aside.
If you're interested in this type of discussion, I'm publishing three books this summer on the subject: noegoodyssey.com
Thank you for this thoughtful contemplation. It leads me to wonder how to guide my 17 year old nephew, who is looking at colleges. His interests are international relations and environmental science. I'm concerned that the costs may not be worth it as there's so much evolving so quickly. How would you guide a young person to choose the college that's right for them?
An excellent summary of the economic theories that have, among other things, both been: 1. "discovered" (as Nate notes), not as theories, so much as laws, i.e. believed to be scientifically very likely (aka true) by the study of the modern economies of the "developed" world, and 2. used to guide decision-making by businesses, including financial ones, and 2. governments in guiding decision making as to regulating businesses - what and how to regulate them, and whether to regulate them. It is clear to many in the western world, and to virtually all scientiists who are studying the rapid degradation of the habitability of the planet to complex life, as a result of human economic activity, that what is taught in business schools is turning out to be a roadmap to self-destruction of humans, and to the biosphere as a whole. Two thoughts:
1. Extremely rapid growth of easily extractable energy (fossil fuels), rapid scientific advances, industrialization, and machine learning and information detection, and other new technological tools have all driven massive increases in human wealth, human lifespan, and human domination of life on earth, and changed the biosphere profoundly.
It is becoming clear that these changes, shaped in part by what is taught in business schools, has simultaneously led to enormous biosphere degradation, which has been increasing very rapidly
for more or less 50-100 years. Climate change ,and biosphere degradation are acceleratiing at a frightening pace, and it is clear that what is taught in business schools has been unable to slow the destruction of the biosphere, and the associated rapidly decereasing habitability of the planet.
Regarding economics, ecological economics needs to move ASAP towards evidence-based theories, operational definitions of terms (sustainability, equity, interconnectedness, valuation, etc),
which would be useful to all the varied approaches being developed, and implemented, in assessing qualitatively and quantitatively the effectiveness of various innovative efforts.
Two final thoughts: 1. we need to provide an answer to a question, that has been asked before, but has failed to get serious attention: What is an economy for? It seems simple-minded, but the conventional answers have, and are, failing. 2. We need to recognize that as we have destroyed the natural world, and human activities have become increasingly economic activities, we have changed our neurological reward systems., as well as our experience of connection, and what and who we bond to. We need to understand this scientifically - we need flexible thinking more than ever about the habits of the heart, to borrow from deTocqueville - there is already a growing behavioral, and neuroscientific field of flexible and dogmatic political thinking - we need to assimilate and expand that into a science that replaces our limited understanding of the incredibly complex interplay of genetic, epigenetic and other forces that drive our decisions, and determine if they are harmful or helpful to life on earth.
I have to prepare a presentation to my philosophy club next week. We almost always include a video. Thanks for making my job easy, with just the right video to show them.
Excellent analysis exposing the emperor as a nudist. Nate Hagens explains how the economic theory still being taught in universities and business schools has given rise to, and continues to exacerbate the multiple crises the world is facing in the twenty first century.
This is a wonderful essay approaching the economics of truth in the natural world. Good economics describes how value works in both egoic and non-egoic life. Some thoughts:
If sanity is objectively observing what is before us, then our scientific, economic, and spiritual education is driving us insane, causing us to confuse Egoic experience with objective or devotional observation.
You're suggesting people aren't rational because we are messy, emotional, deeply social, and care what other people think. Human behavior is rational when we understand 1) Most people do what ego tells them do, and 2) Feeling is an evaluative function as rational as thought. We feel and think what we do for reasons we evaluate against our perception of an unknowable truth. Not all thoughts or feelings are the same. An objective model for humanity considers how we think and feel without ego.
Saying we are "beautifully irrational" is not seeing the rationality behind non-egoic life. For example, a parent caring for a child is not "beautifully irrational," but following a logic ego doesn't understand.
We can discuss each of these economic myths from a non-egoic viewpoint, but we'll leave it here.
Humanity is like a spouse having to suffer an addict/alcoholic mate as they pull the family through hell on the way to the spouse hitting rock bottom and admitting they're powerless before their addiction and life is unmanageable.
Ego helps children grow into beautiful individuals, but adults mature by willfully setting ego aside. We are addicted to our egos and learning the value of setting it aside.
If you're interested in this type of discussion, I'm publishing three books this summer on the subject: noegoodyssey.com
Thank you for this thoughtful contemplation. It leads me to wonder how to guide my 17 year old nephew, who is looking at colleges. His interests are international relations and environmental science. I'm concerned that the costs may not be worth it as there's so much evolving so quickly. How would you guide a young person to choose the college that's right for them?
NOT FOR SALE
An excellent summary of the economic theories that have, among other things, both been: 1. "discovered" (as Nate notes), not as theories, so much as laws, i.e. believed to be scientifically very likely (aka true) by the study of the modern economies of the "developed" world, and 2. used to guide decision-making by businesses, including financial ones, and 2. governments in guiding decision making as to regulating businesses - what and how to regulate them, and whether to regulate them. It is clear to many in the western world, and to virtually all scientiists who are studying the rapid degradation of the habitability of the planet to complex life, as a result of human economic activity, that what is taught in business schools is turning out to be a roadmap to self-destruction of humans, and to the biosphere as a whole. Two thoughts:
1. Extremely rapid growth of easily extractable energy (fossil fuels), rapid scientific advances, industrialization, and machine learning and information detection, and other new technological tools have all driven massive increases in human wealth, human lifespan, and human domination of life on earth, and changed the biosphere profoundly.
It is becoming clear that these changes, shaped in part by what is taught in business schools, has simultaneously led to enormous biosphere degradation, which has been increasing very rapidly
for more or less 50-100 years. Climate change ,and biosphere degradation are acceleratiing at a frightening pace, and it is clear that what is taught in business schools has been unable to slow the destruction of the biosphere, and the associated rapidly decereasing habitability of the planet.
Regarding economics, ecological economics needs to move ASAP towards evidence-based theories, operational definitions of terms (sustainability, equity, interconnectedness, valuation, etc),
which would be useful to all the varied approaches being developed, and implemented, in assessing qualitatively and quantitatively the effectiveness of various innovative efforts.
Two final thoughts: 1. we need to provide an answer to a question, that has been asked before, but has failed to get serious attention: What is an economy for? It seems simple-minded, but the conventional answers have, and are, failing. 2. We need to recognize that as we have destroyed the natural world, and human activities have become increasingly economic activities, we have changed our neurological reward systems., as well as our experience of connection, and what and who we bond to. We need to understand this scientifically - we need flexible thinking more than ever about the habits of the heart, to borrow from deTocqueville - there is already a growing behavioral, and neuroscientific field of flexible and dogmatic political thinking - we need to assimilate and expand that into a science that replaces our limited understanding of the incredibly complex interplay of genetic, epigenetic and other forces that drive our decisions, and determine if they are harmful or helpful to life on earth.
I have to prepare a presentation to my philosophy club next week. We almost always include a video. Thanks for making my job easy, with just the right video to show them.