Money Breaks the Chain of Desire and Effect

It is too easy, I wrote the other day, for our materialistic emotions to override any fleeting feelings of spiritual conscience! But we need that conscience. In the day to day rush of our lives we quickly forget those many parts of the world where finding the basic necessities of life, warmth, clean air, medicine, clean water, food and housing is a daily and often dangerous struggle. Are we sure that how we earn, spend, save and invest our money is not in some way adversely affecting our fellow human beings in less fortunate parts of the world? And do we care?
It has been said that one of the underlying problems with money is that ‘…it breaks the chain of desire and effect. [It] provokes people to act, for the sake of payment, in a fashion that, if they knew how the action would turn out, they would not contemplate.’(1)
It is all too easy to ‘tell the world to get lost’ and at least in our dreams ride off into the distance like the beautiful lady in the advertisement. (previous blog post) That is no solution. Escapism is no way to a clear conscience. We really do need to fight our complacency and apathy. People are suffering as we all read this and actions need to be taken. Of course we have to alleviate as much suffering as possible immediately, but without at any time losing sight of the longer term plan of rescue. For those victims of war, poverty, disease and drought, life is a daily struggle for survival. Getting those people back on their feet is a much more effective long-term strategy than any amount of aid that we can give now. A good example was the story of Grameen Bank and the poor Bangladeshi women (15th November blog post).


1. James Buchan, Frozen Desire – the Meaning of Money, New York: Welcome Rain Publishers, 2001, p. 48, where he describes the painting by Rembrandt entitled Judas, Repentant, Returning the Pieces of Silver and how it captures the ‘strangeness of money’ and the devastating realization by Judas that for…pieces of silver he has brought about the assassination of Jesus Christ. Painted 1629 – one of Rembrandt’s early paintings.

To be continued…

Adapted from Healing this Wounded Earth © Eleanor Stoneham 2011

Occupy London at St Pauls and Economic Justice

So the Occupy Wall Street protestors have been evicted from their tent city in Manhattan. I went to London the other day and walked around the Occupy London Stock Exchange tent city outside St Paul's Cathedral. And I met and talked with many very pleasant, very thoughtful and intelligent people who understand very clearly what they are doing and are peacefully calling for economic change. They are fed up with the "fatcats" getting richer, the poor getting poorer, the huge inequalities and injustices in the world, etc etc etc. The site is very well organised, very peaceful, attracting much public support, and the police looked bored stiff! These people are echoing so much that I have written in Healing.... and so I donated a copy of my book to their library as it will be of interest to many of the protestors there. And I thought it appropriate to post some excerpts here over the next week or so, in between postings on Apocalyptic thoughts! (Perhaps there is a link!):

"When the last tree is cut, the last river poisoned, and the last fish dead, we will discover that we can't eat money..."
Greenpeace message on one of their longest banners. (1)

"This notion of spiritless existence can be described as materialism. All is matter; land, forests, food, water, labour, literature and art are commodities to be bought and sold in the marketplace - the world market, the stockmarket, the so-called free market… Business without spirit, trade without compassion, industry without ecology, finance without fairness, economics without equity can only bring the breakdown of society and destruction of the natural world. Only when spirit and business work together can humanity find coherent purpose."
Satish Kumar, “Spiritual Imperative,” Resurgence (2)

In 1976 an economics professor Dr Muhammad Yunus conducted an experiment. He gave the equivalent of $26 to each of 42 workers. From this they all bought materials, spent a day weaving chairs or making pots and were able to sell their wares and repay the loans. Thus was born the concept of microcredit.
Microcredit refers to small loans of less than a few hundred dollars, with no collateral, at nil or no more than commercial interest rates, made to help the poorest of the poor in the third world to start up small enterprises. This enables them to spread their productive capacity and gain some measure of independence and a better standard of living. For Yunus’ subsequent work with Grameen Bank, which was founded to foster this use of microcredit, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to them both in equal shares, for ‘their efforts to create economic and social development from below’, while improving the lives of millions of people in Yunus’ native Bangladesh.
As a young child I won a ten-bob note. That was a considerable prize in those days. I was so excited. I could buy another nature book to add to my collection! How did I win this? For spotting the deliberate error in an article in our village church magazine, which misquoted the Bible as saying money is the root of all evil. Much to my dismay my mother suggested I should immediately volunteer to return this prize to the church. I still vividly remember having the collecting box held under my nose in the vestry by the priest and putting the note very reluctantly back through the slot under my mother’s watchful gaze.
The lesson I had to learn was a hard one and it obviously made a deep impression! As a Christian I should be generous to those more in need than myself. But the ethics of the situation were lost on an eight year old. I had always been told we could not afford those things that my best schoolmates enjoyed, such as a pony or dancing lessons, perhaps a new bike. I was quite discouraged from entering similar competitions again. And I certainly learnt the meaning of voluntary compulsion!
In fact as with so many Biblical references the saying is taken out of context and is not complete. The full quotation reads: ‘For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs.’ (3)
So I believe the lesson of the ten bob note was more profound than my mother may have realized. I was learning the hard way that I had to avoid any love of money for its own sake: that there is so much more to being human in this world than striving for the accumulation of monetary wealth and possessions.
Real wealth is not about money: it is about spiritual wellbeing. It seems that we have largely lost sight of the spirit that is in all matter. As the human ecologist Alastair McIntosh observes in his inspirational book Soil and Soul, ‘We are materially richer than ever before and yet suffer a spiritual poverty…we live, but suffer spiritual death. Our very accomplishments cut us off further from the soul.’ (4) Real security and happiness that we all seek, consciously or unconsciously, will be found in spiritual wealth, for which we have a great hunger.

1. Greenpeace website.
2. Kumar, Satish, in ‘Spiritual Imperative: Elegant Simplicity is the way to Discover Spirituality,’ Resurgence (March/April 2005) issue 229 at http://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article653-SPIRITUAL-IMPERATIVE.html
3. Holy Bible, RSV, 1 Timothy 6.10
4. McIntosh, Alastair, Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power, London: Aurum Press, 2004p. 4.

© Eleanor Stoneham 2011 Excerpts from Healing This Wounded Earth

Obsolete Beliefs numbers 3 and 4

Over the last few weeks I have written about the essay by Ervin Laszlo on “The World’s Health Problem: an Integral Diagnosis” in A New Renaissance – Transforming Science, Spirit and Society. Laszlo concludes: “the world is (1) socially, economically and ecologically unsustainable, (2) saddled with irrational behaviours and (3) governed by obsolete beliefs and aspirations.”

I have covered the first two obsolete beliefs in previous blogs: that we think the planet is inexhaustible, and that we believe that “nature is a mechanism.”

Here is Obsolete Belief number 3: Life is a struggle where only the fittest survive.
“The (mal) adaptation of Darwin’s theory of natural selection to society,” Laszlo writes, “produces a growing gap between rich and poor, and concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a small group of smart but often unscrupulous managers and speculators.”
And here is his Obsolete Belief number 4, which is closely linked to number 3: The Market Distributes Benefits.” Affluent people tend to hold on to the belief that the free market, governed by what Adam Smith called the “invisible hand,” distributes the benefits of economic activity…the poverty and marginalization of nearly half of the world’s population,” he writes, “is eloquent testimony to the fact that this tenet doesn’t work in the context of today’s power- and wealth-distorted global markets.”

While we enjoy material riches, real poverty is indeed rife and 923 million people across the world are hungry. In addition, almost 16,000 children die every day from hunger-related causes. That’s one child every five seconds. Yes, one child dies from hunger every five seconds.
The injustices of the rich/poor divide bring discontent and envy, particularly with the globalization of information. Poverty brings disease and lack of education, which itself perpetuates that poverty. Lack of resources also increases vulnerability to natural disasters that in the developed nations we are broadly speaking better able to handle. Inadequate and poor quality housing exacerbates the impact of floods, hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes. Although we often call such disasters ‘Acts of God’ there is evidence that some of these ‘natural’ disasters are linked to man’s own interference with the planet. There is widespread homelessness, and a devastating AIDS/HIV crisis. I have seen various estimates of the number of children who will be orphaned by AIDS in Africa by 2010, ranging from 20 million to 50 million. Even the lower figure is appalling.

These statistics are an affront to our humanity. We need to do all we can to lift the most disadvantaged in our world out of poverty. This is a matter of justice and it is a matter of human compassion.
In 1976 an economics professor Dr Muhammad Yunus conducted an experiment. He gave the equivalent of $26 to each of 42 workers. From this they all bought materials, spent a day weaving chairs or making pots and were able to sell their wares and repay the loans. Thus was born the concept of microcredit.
Microcredit refers to small loans of less than a few hundred dollars, with no collateral, at nil or no more than commercial interest rates, made to help the poorest of the poor in the third world to start up small enterprises. This enables them to spread their productive capacity and gain some measure of independence and a better standard of living. For Yunus’ subsequent work with Grameen Bank, which was founded to foster this use of microcredit, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to them both in equal shares, for ‘their efforts to create economic and social development from below’, while improving the lives of millions of people in Yunus’ native Bangladesh.
Every person we help out of poverty, and towards independence, contributes towards making the world a better place for us all.
We cannot all be in the front line, at the sharp end of humanitarian relief efforts. But we can all make a contribution, however small, to reputable aid agencies to help and support them in their work.
I have a Cooperative Community card. Every time I shop at the Co-op, one penny is taken from me for every £1 I spend, and given to local deserving charities. What a fine and painless way of helping the community where we live, helping to make it a better place for us all.

The picture, by the way, is from the cover of Creation in Crisis; Christian Perspectives on Sustainability that I have reviewed previously.