Abstract
Renteria-Uriarte examines the economy and economics from the perspective of contemplative knowledge. The economy is a manifestation of deep consciousness, and economic agents choose between alternatives by connecting or disconnecting their consciousness from it, that is, acting ignorantly as homo economicus, with more awareness as homo socioeconomicus and eticoeconomicus, or with full realization as homo deepeconomicus. Contemplation helps agents act according to wu-wei, karmayogi and appamada actions, and in flow or optimal experience—states which cultivate absorption in the tasks and remove the ego and its related rational cost–benefit analysis. This allows them to know the economy as it really is: a space of abundance without the illusion of scarcity, where self-realization, rewarding work and constructive human relationships arise, accompanied by simplified consumption, equitable incomes and stable prices.
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Notes
- 1.
Other definitions of the economy and economics from a contemplative viewpoint have been given, but they are part of this more general definition. For example , Schumacher (1973) said that from a Buddhist viewpoint, the economy defines “how to attain given ends with the minimum means”. The means refer to the consumption of natural resources and other inputs in production. Essentially, he is discussing simplified consumption.
- 2.
This perspective is ever-present in wisdom traditions . For example, “Primitive people are those with less material culture … But they [possess comparatively greater] social solidarity , or respect for nature … [Their attitude towards] accumulation is one of the biggest differences … In some cultures, greedy people are regarded in the worst light and they are unable to enter the afterlife” (Pancorbo, 2000).
- 3.
Links between positive psychology and Asian worldviews have also been proposed in a more general scope: Confucianism, emptiness and good life (Sundararajan, 2005, 2008, 2013); self/environment dialectics and happiness (Li, 2009); dukkha and samādhic happiness (Kolm, 2014); or positive and Buddhist psychologies (Murphy, 2011).
- 4.
For example, as the market sector, economy has been defined as “the whole system of exchange relationships” in the markets , including political structures (Buchanan, 1964, p. 220), or as the “institutions [as firms, input and output markets, the banking system, etc.] that bind together [this] system” (Coase, 1977, p. 487). And as individual choices due to scarcity, in which is nowadays the standard definition of mainstream economics, as “the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses” (Robbins, 1932, p. 15).
- 5.
Perhaps the most difficult to understand, and not only from Western worldview, is how physical objects can also subsume ‘within themselves’ the contemplative awareness. The explanation is that they have not ‘conscientized’. In economy, it would be as follows. Natural resources, infrastructures, products, money or financial actives form its material level. The connectivity that those physical objects experience (in this case due to human action) forms its live level. The structures in which they are involved (productive, exchange, financial, etc.) form its mental level. All the transformative processes and those emergences are their creative level. And inside them lies unconsciously the unitive level of inner awareness. Some aspects of this holographic path are studied by distinct economic schools (e.g., the descriptions of infrastructures, exchange nets, etc.), while others correspond to natural sciences and engineering (the performing industrial processes of resources and products), and the patterns and structures of economy are mostly analysed by structuralist economics.
- 6.
Our above definition of economics shall also be understood in this holographic structure of the levels of existence, with the first three objectives (inner development, rewarding work and constructive relationships) as the most creative and unitive, and with the last five (simplified consumption, fair incomes, stable prices and accordingly finance and trade) as the most physical (Renteria-Uriarte, 2013, 2017). In this sense, we can prioritize the first three as target objectives (of the economy); the following three as operating means (for them) and the last two as the basic scenarios (for the previous); however, this concerns the political side of economics, and it is not our issue here.
- 7.
All of these issues bring us back to a constant of human history: in the accurate rhyme of the Spanish poet Antonio Machado, “es de necio confundir valor y precio” (only the fool confuses value with price). We continue valuing the ‘success’ of social actions for their ‘cash value’, when variables such as happiness in workplace, for example, are so economical than cash at the end of the month. And, somewhat strikingly, not mainstream economics, but positive psychology is the field that gives attention to those economic aspects (Deitcher, 2011; Diener & Seligman, 2009; Linley, Harrington, & Garcea, 2010; Russell, 2008; Spence Laschinger, Finegan, Shamian, & Wilk, 2004).
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Renteria-Uriarte, X. (2018). Contemplative Economy and Contemplative Economics: Definitions, Branches and Methodologies. In: Giorgino, V., Walsh, Z. (eds) Co-Designing Economies in Transition. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66592-4_10
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