silly money and social consequences

A friend’s gliding club premises were broken into the other night and well and truly trashed before the vandals made off with some expensive equipment.

Our local allotments are regularly broken into, sheds and green houses damaged and stuff stolen.

One can only assume that the people who do these things feel that in some way society owes them something that they don’t have, cannot get, other than through dishonest means. And they presumably feel angry as well, which is where the trashing comes in.

We hear this weekend that the Welsh football star Gareth Bale is to transfer from Tottenham to Real Madrid for a transfer fee of $130 million and a weekly pay for 6 years of $465,000. That’s very roughly $66,000 per day or $2700 per hour or $46 per minute. We can argue over exact amounts due to conversion rate and rounding differences but at those values who cares? The point is that this sort of money for a single man who happens to be quite good at kicking a ball around a field is obscene in any currency!

There’s a TV ad at the moment that shouts at us from the screen the virtues of taking part in a lottery – we can get lots of stuff, lots of money, we are told. Stuff, stuff, money, money… As if that is all that’s important in life and this will be the route to happiness. But it isn't and it won't be!

The divide between the materially wealthy and the hungry poor in the world is massive and the gap is apparently widening. Around half the world’s population live on less than $2 per person per day, a massive testament to human suffering, and this figure includes something like 1.4 million American households. Statistics such as these are an affront to our humanity when at the same time we have the ‘super rich’, to be found among the celebrities of sport, television and movie, the top bankers, investment fund managers, lawyers and doctors, including a footballer who will earn $46 per minute! It is true that many on the ‘rich-list’ are extremely generous in giving their time, talent and wealth for the global good, using their celebrity status or wealth or both to for social justice worldwide; people such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and Bono, the Irish lead singer of U2, best known perhaps for his key involvement with the Make Poverty History campaign.

But silly salaries and lavish life-styles breed an envy and greed, particularly it would seem among the young who are being taught by example that material wealth and celebrity status are the measure of ‘success’. And in the developing world others are attracted to our consumer life style and aspire to similar ‘wealth’. 

Meanwhile the poor of the world continue to struggle for survival and allotments and gliding clubs will still be broken into and trashed.

With recent stories about the behavior of bankers in the LIBOR scandal, and debates on when legal tax avoidance becomes morally repugnant, are we not seeing the effects of a rampant materialism that seems to have careered out of control in our society? In the Bible we are told that: "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." This is an ancient wisdom that seems to be coming to fruition all around us.

Aristotle made the distinction between essential and therefore laudable expenditure for the daily needs of food, shelter and clothing, and the acquisition of money for acquisition’s sake by profit associated with retail trade. The latter he censured:

"…because the gain in which it results is not naturally made, but is made at the expense of other men. The trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason: it makes a profit from currency itself, instead of making it from the process which currency was meant to serve. Currency came into existence merely as a means of exchange; usury tries to make it increase."

Then again Augustine saw that the State which looked after only its own interests rather than pursuing a justice for all was no more than an organized band of robbers.

And what happened to the Commandment "Thou shalt not steal"? Why not substitute State with 'bankers' in Augustine's vision, or indeed why only pick on bankers? Sometimes I think that we are all in danger of becoming like that band of robbers - indeed perhaps we are already there. We forget at our peril that we are now profoundly connected as humans across the world, because we often tend to be guilty of a kind of group egotism, loving only our own kind and conveniently forgetting the plight of those who are perhaps less fortunate than ourselves, and remote from our own sheltered existences.

In my first book, Healing… I devoted a chapter to "The Hope of a Healed Economy: In Pursuit of Social Justice," writing of the dangers ahead, drawing on the inspiration we can find in ancient wisdoms, and looking at our own individual responsibilities and choices. Because we all need to make a connection between the way we use money and our moral beliefs. I don’t like to say now that "I told you so," but I will! 

Aristotle (1998) Politics, translated by Ernest Barker, revised R.F. Stalley, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1.9 1258a 35 p. 30.

More thoughts on the English city lootings

What is money? It is difficult to define. We have ingrained within our deepest psyche a sense that our monetary wealth reflects our success and affects our happiness.
But we know from studies that once a certain and fairly modest standard of living has been achieved any further increase in wealth does not improve our happiness. It is then influenced more by our status in society, the quality of our personal relationships and our physical health.And status emphatically does not mean celebrity status. It means being valued for our own unique gifts and qualities, whatever those may be.

And that is an important point in considering the reasons for the riots of the last week in English Cities: being valued for our own unique gifts and qualities, whatever those may be.

Because these lootings of shops and businesses were not about need. Many of these youngsters didn’t actually want for very much in material needs – many seemed to have expensive smart phones, and many also drove away from the trouble when they had done their worst in cars that were more than “old bangers.”
Yes the looting was about materialism and greed, and a lack of understanding between what is right and wrong. But what example have these people been set over the last few months by the Members of Parliament expenses scandal, or the News of the World Phone Hacking revelations. It is more than just these youngsters (and some not so young) who need to learn the difference between right and wrong. And what do our youth think when they see the ‘super rich’, to be found most visibly to them among the celebrities of sport, television and movie, but particularly the footballers.

The lavish life-styles led by many such persons breed an envy and greed, particularly it would seem among the young who are being taught by example that material wealth and celebrity status are the measure of ‘success’. Add to that a lack of education, jobs, stable family relationships, a lack of self worth or self esteem, and the recipe for disaffection and looting and violence is put together. All it takes is for the fuse to be lit.

I expand these thoughts and offer many ideas for how we can all do our bit to heal these and many others issues of the world in my own book. There is much more information on my website.

The cult of celebrity

“We think more highly of people such as Simon Cowell than we should do – we’re talking about someone who is essentially trivial. There’s no harm in pop music, but think of the status of classical musicians who earn £70 a gig.”
This is what Lord Robert Winston – Professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College London, popular TV Science programme host and author of more than a dozen books – said in an interview for The Times Magazine for the 4th June 2011.
This celebrity cult, he said, he found depressing.

And I think it is depressing because it has become a huge problem, particularly in the upbringing of our kids, who see celebrities as role models and look up to them in awe, yearning themselves for the same fame and fortune when they grow up.

Sadly this emphasis is also seen too often in the self- help and self-development genre of book that is so popular today. I suspect that quite a few of us have reached in our time to those sections of a library or bookshop tempted by books that promise to ‘change our lives’, or help us ‘succeed’. Many of these are excellent. I have quite a few on my own bookshelves!
But too often they feed the petty ego of self, the selfish desire for individual improvement, the seemingly endless drive for power and wealth. And this style of self-development is often measured by the values of material gain, promotion, or celebrity status. And incidentally the authors are often extremely wealthy and part of the celebrity cult themselves!

Should we not be wary of a self- help industry if it becomes so self-centered on the individual at the expense of others? Doesn’t this approach fuel greed and envy, eschew vulnerability and threaten genuine altruism? I think so.

Unfortunately a huge and profitable industry has built up around this ‘success’ culture. What is more, many such books actively discourage contact with those who are wounded in our society, the vulnerable, the loners, the unhappy, the unsuccessful, the disadvantaged, those who are damaged emotionally. Such weaknesses are too often seen as inhibiting to our own ‘development’.
By not helping such people don’t we dig ourselves deeper into a less attractive future? Don’t we risk divorcing ourselves from experiencing and displaying that empathy and compassion so essential for a better world?

Anglican Bishop Peter Selby observed that ‘the obsessive search for personal growth and inner wholeness without concern for the health of society is distorting.’**
Nowhere is this distortion more obvious, and more potentially harmful than among these books that fuel what has been dubbed the new egocentric ‘Me-Millennium’.

**(Selby, Peter, Liberating God, Private Care and Public Struggle

, London: SPCK, 1983, publisher’s note, back cover.)

Flaws in our Economy - Humans are not Valued

I have been writing about money and our economy, and last Thursday I said that we had to start with our own spending patterns, and how these may be flawed.
Now I turn to flaws in our economy.

Number One - Humans are not valued
A very large number of people in our society are presently undervalued or not valued at all in monetary terms. These include the old and young, the infirm and disabled, the housewives and the many community and charity volunteers without whom many organizations would simply not survive. All of these people outside the conventional workforce often work very much harder and longer hours than many in full time employment. But they gain no financial independence or recognition within the economic framework from their toil.

I know of a wife who for two decades has selflessly cared full time for an increasingly and profoundly disabled husband. Or I think of the mother who takes a career break to raise her own children. These women both lead enormously valuable lives, but feel undervalued.

We measure a ‘healthy’ economy in terms of the material wealth or prosperity that is created by and for its working citizens, expressed in terms such as the gross domestic product (GDP), gross domestic income (GDI) or gross national product (GNP). Now in this current financial crisis the emphasis is on the need for growth in the economy. Whichever measure is used, they all put a zero valuation on the environment, on healthy citizens, on social cohesion and cultural values!

As Robert Kennedy once said:

…the (Gross National Product) does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages… It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans...

And these thoughts are relevant for us all, whatever our race or color or creed. 

Our flawed economy - our flawed behaviour

The other day I wrote about why we need money, and said I would return to look at the flaws in our economy. But first we need to look at our own flawed behavior.

Some while ago a series of bank advertisements on the management of wealth appeared in the glossy weekend media. One of these featured a lone and pretty girl cantering away on a lovely white stallion into the beautiful and totally unblemished distance. ‘What...[is wealth]…to you?’ the headline asked. ‘It’s being able to tell the world to get lost.’
That's so awful!
How can any single one of us afford to turn our back on the world in this way in any sense. How can any of us ride away to an unblemished horizon while so many basic human rights are not available to so many? That surely diminishes us as human beings. But someone, indeed a team of people, wrote that advertisement.

In our materially rich Western society it is too easy to be wooed by the power of marketing and advertising. Psychological insights developed to help us understand the healing needs of our souls are instead cynically used for marketing purposes. The advertisers play on our feelings of guilt or fear and our need for love and comfort, which often reflect in some of the worst aspects of human behavior, our insecurity, envy and discontent. These traits fuel our over-consumption and greed for material possessions.

If we would only understand such faults in our nature and allow them to be healed rather than exploited, there may yet be hope for the plight of our global brothers and sisters who through accident of birth are far less privileged than ourselves. Then we can hope to build an economy that is globally just and contributes to a healing world.

Prince Charles too dangerous to be King?

Prince Charles too dangerous to be King?
I am dismayed today to read this headline in the Daily Mail, to an article written by Max Hastings. I have recently written two blogs around Prince Charles' new book Harmony, and its importance for our world and our survival within it. Now yet again here is someone who is totally misunderstanding what Prince Charles is saying.
I quote from my previous blog on this:
"Clearly his message is not getting through yet to many of the populace. Far from being old fashioned, His Royal Highness is very much up to speed with all that is going on in our world and more than happy to embrace new ideas - as long as they are sustainable and not harmful to our planet. He thinks and feels very deeply about these issues, is hugely knowledgeable about them and passionate to do all he can to promote a new sustainable way of living for us all in the interests of protecting our planet from any more harm. And if that means resurrecting many values which we have lost sight of in the profligate West, what is wrong with that? We must not confuse ancient wisdom with the derogatory implications of the term "old fashioned,"...."
And Prince Charles' views most certainly are NOT dangerous. the danger is when we ignore them.

Contrary to what Max Hastings says, Prince Charles is most certainly not woolly headed, and he is not rejecting all science - he is simply saying that there is far more to understand beyond reductionist and materialistic science - such science does not provide all the answers. There is an urgent need to be more in touch with nature and understand the fragile nature of the world's ecosystems, of which we are but a small part. We need to work WITH nature, not have dominion over it. Make no mistake, the earth can carry on very well without us when we become extinct through our own actions. I urge anyone to beg or borrow or buy and read this book and ignore Max Hastings.

The photos show a small part of the devastation wreaked to a sea level garden area of a hotel in La Gomera, damage caused by an abnormally rough sea and high tide a month or so ago.

Ai Weiwei Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern

In London the other day I went into Tate Modern to see the new Unilever sculpture exhibition in the Turbine Hall; Sunflower Seeds, by Ai Weiwei.

This is explained on the Tate Modern website by Juliet Bingham, Curator of the Tate Modern:

"Ai Weiwei's Unilever Series commission, Sunflower Seeds, is a beautiful, poignant and thought-provoking sculpture. The thinking behind the work lies in far more than just the idea of walking on it. The precious nature of the material, the effort of production and the narrative and personal content create a powerful commentary on the human condition...Each piece is a part of the whole, a commentary on the relationship between the individual and the masses. The work continues to pose challenging questions: What does it mean to be an individual in today's society? Are we insignificant or powerless unless we act together? What do our increasing desires, materialism and number mean for society, the environment and the future?"

Oh dear. I clearly missed the point - and let my disappointment at not being able to interact with the seeds, walk in them, touch them, sit amongst them, (restrictions introduced for health and safety reasons, it was explained), cloud my perception and interpretation. Surprising when you think that the messages within the exhibit should have resonated with my own ideas on mass consumerism, materialism, human rights, the environment etc. and all dear to my own heart. As you will see in the video I made there! I think I will not be seeking a job as a TV presenter any time soon!!

And I must go there again with fresh eyes and an open and more receptive mind.

Rediscovering Values

This half term week reminds me of another half term; it must have been many years ago - my boys are now young adults. It was a rain soaked Sunday, and we had the misfortune to visit a large shopping mall outside town to return some goods to one of those internationally known super stores.

All those years ago the elder of our two boys was in a religious studies lesson at school. They were discussing Sunday Trading. “It is just wrong,” he said. No reason was needed – it was simply wrong!

Ever since it was introduced I have abhorred Sunday trading, and actually I also loathe those big soulless monuments or temples to consumerism and materialism we call superstores and shopping malls. But as I said we needed to change something and thought we could save petrol by calling in on our way to visit a local house and garden of historic interest with the kids. I had completed my morning duties at the Sunday service in our local parish church. This trip to the shop was meant to be incidental only, en route to our traditional Sunday afternoon family excursion, this time to Down House, the country home of Charles Darwin for the last 40 years of his life until he died in 1882.

Now I realize that for many Christians who like me abhor Sunday trading the mention of Darwin and his views on evolution may itself open up a fairly passionate discussion about The Origin of the Species and his theories of Evolution and Natural Selection. I’ll take that risk, but that isn’t the point of this story.

The car parks around the superstore were practically gridlocked, cars jostling for the scarce, almost nonexistent empty parking spaces, and families with their children were pouring into and out of the store, those on the outward home bound journey pushing trolleys loaded high with consumable goods. There were several thousand cars there, with perhaps 3 or 4 or more in each car. The arithmetic is simple and the disquieting effect on my previous feeling of spiritual calm was very real!

The damage to the environment inflicted through our collective behaviours around that one store on that one day must have been colossal. It doesn’t bear contemplation to multiply the effect by the number of other similar stores around the country presumably displaying the same patterns of greed and consumerism! These places have become for many the new religion, shopping malls replacing the church as the Sunday venue of first choice.

At least I was trying to economise that day and avoid two car trips where one could suffice; and our shopping trip was intended to be fleeting!

A Fragile Economic Recovery

"When the last tree is cut, the last river poisoned, and the last fish dead, we will discover that we can't eat money..." (words on a Greenpeace banner)

 I am reading Jim Wallis’ latest book, Rediscovering Values – On Wall Street, Main Street and Your Street (A Moral Compass for the New Economy) and I was reminded of an article I wrote back in 2008 – and thought it was worth repeating – a little updated.

Do let me have your views.

I wrote this as global stock markets were in turmoil, rocked by the credit crunch and the banking crisis. Whilst stock markets may be a little stabilized, the situation is still clearly fragile. And many still feel the recession gnawing at their financially precarious lives, whilst bankers yet again take huge bonuses. Isn’t more of the same sort of economy just going to get us in the same mess again later? Is this not another warning to us all about the non-sustainability of our economic policies as fuelled by our individual behaviour?

The predominant "free market" system of finance capitalism that operates in the world today is perhaps not what it seems. Many believe that it is seriously flawed. It relies on the creation of fiat money by the banks and a crippling compound interest loan system. It does not value the person, it is fuelled by profit motivation, and it ignores the ancient wisdom of the Old Testament land and debt laws at its peril. It contributes to the malaise of the world, both internationally and at local and national level, by fuelling injustices, increasing the rich/poor divide, failing to protect the environment and helping to destroy probably the most important contribution to trust and security and happiness once a basic standard of living has been achieved – sound personal relationships at family and community level. Strong words I know, and maybe controversial!

But pause and think. Would we as individuals eat everything in our own fridge and leave our elderly and young, our disabled and disadvantaged, all those living under our same roof, without any food and care? Of course not! But that is what we are doing. Because that is the reality of the world today. It is one global household, and we should behave accordingly.
We have to find ways to live more sustainable lives in a world where we can be sure that our good fortune is shared, where everyone has their basic human needs met, where both extremes of wealth and poverty become history.

We have lost our simple values, the art of love and respect and reverence for all living beings, animal and plant and human, the ability to understand ourselves as being part of a finely balanced world wide ecosystem, that together with the Earth we live on, we call Gaia. The economy of the world has to mimic the natural world and be totally cyclical and sustainable and environmentally sound. In nature everything is recycled – everything has a further use. Only if we behave with full understanding of our place within the living world, and build our economy accordingly – build it on principles of sustainability and justice for all – I believe that only then can we hope to heal this fractured world.


So what can we do?


We must support any initiatives that help people get back on their feet. We should support genuine Fair-trade, Traid-craft and other similar schemes wherever we can. We should curb our over consumption and wasteful behaviour, and use local charity shops, the Internet Freecycle facility and our recycling facilities wherever possible.


And we can and must fight to bring ethical trading in from the bottom up – enquire where our goods are produced and in what conditions - eschew all cheap goods where we know that unethical working practices are present. If the information is not available, demand it.

Be responsible shareholders, employees, employers and consumers. Many of us will own stocks and shares in some way, even perhaps without realising it in our pension funds. Some of these shares may well be in companies that operate unethical work practices, deal in weapons, or otherwise demonstrate behaviours that we would not support or condone in our own families. Look for ethical investments before profit motivation and ensure that any financial advisers know your views.
As Employees, Board Members, Non Executive Directors, Trustees, do we take a stand, perhaps against strong opposition, for that which we know to be right? Or do we allow practices to persist that we are uncomfortable with? Do we know what our employer really does – not just at the superficial level of our daily employment – but also at grass roots? Are we absolutely comfortable with its trading practices, its markets, its environmental footprint?
And if not, what are we doing about it?

It may often seem that the individual does not have a voice. But we can have our say – we can influence others – it needs knowledge and courage, and the support of other like-minded people.

And we should all give our support to any movements that are working towards a fairer, safer and happier world for all. Visit for example the website of The Global Justice Movement and support its aims. "Global justice grows from within. It starts with endogenous money and ends with peace."


Finally remember the parables of Jesus in Luke Chapter 12. Do not store up surplus for the future, do not worry about how you will be fed and clothed. In the words of the well-known hymn by Karen Lafferty, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you, allelu, aleluia." This is not saying that we should not work to feed and clothe ourselves, but it is warning us of the dangers of materialism and all that this implies in our world.


This really only scratches the surface of a huge topic – let's have your views.


Eleanor