Occupy London at St Pauls and Economic Justice part 2

"The human soul can be very powerful when it is sufficiently aroused; even in the context of changing our flawed economy! Alastair McIntosh tells the tale (1) of how in the last decade of the twentieth century the might of a great corporation was broken by spirituality and theology. Scientific and economic values clashed head on with spirituality. Against what seemed like overwhelming opposition the soul in the end prevailed.
The Community of the Isle of Harris, in the Western Isles of Scotland, was threatened by the development in their midst of a devastating super quarry, a wound and scar of massive proportions. With the assistance of a Native American Warrior Chief Sulian Stone Eagle Herney and what was said to be the first ever theological submission put before a public enquiry the islanders were able to prevent a large corporation (Redland Aggregates Plc) from going ahead with their plans. Overnight the share price of the company on the London Stock exchange fell a massive 8% or £160million pounds! If the project had gone ahead who would have gained from the cruel ravages inflicted on a finely balanced community such as Harris?

The flaws of human nature

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.’ Whoaaa!
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 our behavioral faults 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.
Before looking at ways we can all act to help our world towards some monetary justice, let’s look at our current situation.
The current world situation
The divide between the materially wealthy and the hungry poor is massive and the gap is apparently widening. Statistics from the World Bank tell us that in 2005 26% of the developing world was living below US$1.25 a day, representing 1.4 billion people. If we look at the number living on less than $2 a day, that represented 48% of the world population, or around 2.5 billion men, women and children, a massive testament to human suffering. (2) 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. It is true that many on the ‘rich-list’ are extremely generous in giving their time, talent and wealth for the global good. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is particularly keen to stamp out the world’s worst diseases that afflict and kill millions each year, most often the young and the poor. He has pledged $25 million to buy 100 million oral polio vaccines for Nigeria, and announced in 2009 that he was giving £115 million towards developing a vaccine for Malaria, which kills up to 2.7 million people a year, 75% of them African children. Bono, the Irish lead singer of U2, best known perhaps for his key involvement with the Make Poverty History campaign, uses his celebrity status to fight for social justice worldwide.
There are others whose 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.
The truth is that we have forgotten how to live simply and sustainably with totally unselfish regard for those around us. We have lost the ability to generously share, to ensure that everyone in the same household has had their fill before going ourselves for second helpings.
Consider also that we have an obesity epidemic in the developed western world. Indeed obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death in the USA. An estimated 65% of U.S. adults, aged 20 years and older, and 15% of children and adolescents are overweight or obese. Around 34% of adults are obese. That amounts to c. 59 million people! The figures elsewhere are not much better. In 2006 24% of the adult English population were obese, and in children up to 15 years of age the figure was 16%. And both figures are increasing. (3)
We need to find ways to adapt to sustainable living 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 do indeed become history.
We need to build our economy on principles of sustainability and justice for all. Only then can we hope to heal the world.
We must never lose sight of our part as individual players in the world economy. Whether we like it or not, we are all involved as consumers and as investors. Even if we believe we are doing all we can to help, by maximizing our recycling, curbing our expenditure, avoiding waste, and investing ethically, we are still unknowingly or blindly fuelling a wounded economy that is perpetuating the world’s injustices. The responsibility is ours…

And that is why I support the essence of the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy London Stock Exchange protests.

to be continued


1. Alastair McIntosh Soil and Soul Chapter 14 et. seq.
2. World Bank poverty statistics available for 2005 as at March 2009.
3. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, statistics at http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/index.html and Statistics on obesity, physical activity and diet: England, January 2008


© Eleanor Stoneham 2011 Excerpts from Healing this Wounded Earth

Love a Lout and Hug a Hoodie! Where have we gone wrong?

A young man murdered a teenager in a South London suburb in an unthinking moment of unprovoked aggression. This man has been sentenced to life imprisonment, and two families each lose a son. One was much loved. Nothing will fill the hole in his parents’ hearts. What about the other? In summing up the case on the steps of the Law Courts the police said that these two young people came from different worlds in the same city. One was a decent and loving child. One, he said, was a yob.
That was a few years ago now. Fast-forward to the events of the last few days in English cities and we see that little seems to have changed.
Prime Minister David Cameron returned early from holiday – some would say he should have come sooner - to take charge of what has unravelled as an appalling and frightening situation on our streets. Certain sectors of our society, he said, are quite frankly sick.
So how do we go about healing this sickness?

Five years ago, in 2006, when he was the UK Conservative Party leader, David Cameron expressed his view that kids guilty of anti social behavior needed compassion and kindness from those who worked with them. The press distorted his remarks. Go out and ‘hug a hoodie’ or ‘love a lout’, they proclaimed. His comments were ridiculed.
In fact there is a serious and real truth hidden behind this media scorn!
Cameron was speaking to the Centre for Social Justice on the link between social injustices and crime, particularly among the young. The point he actually made in a thoughtful and balanced speech was that long-term answers to anti-social behavior would be found in a ‘pro-social’ society. We have to get to grips, he said, with the causes of crime. We must understand the social circumstances that so often create the environment for the anti-social behavior in the first place. Of course we need tough sanctions and a sense of justice and boundaries. But if the police stand for sanctions and penalties, then all those who work with the kids must stand for love. Not, Cameron assured us, a soppy love, but a love that is all about relationships and emotional development in an atmosphere of security and trust.
Five years later, what has been achieved? Clearly not enough!
First let me say that neither Cameron nor I are in any way condoning the appalling acts of criminality witnessed over the last dew days. (Although the subsequent clean-ups organized by many decent citizens do reflect the makings of Cameron's Big Society.) But we do all have to ask ourselves what can we do, personally, to help prevent such happenings again. How do we give these perpetrators of violence and looting a sense of worth, a sense of moral values, of right from wrong?
The issues here are several, and complex, and unemployment and poor education, often indeed linked, contribute to a lack of self worth and self- esteem. But this looting is all about materiality, and greed, for consumer goods that are not going to make any of those people happier or more fulfilled in the long run. It will put quite a few into prison, perhaps blighting their lives permanently. And in destroying businesses the yobs are destroying the very hands that could feed them! We have clearly failed many of our own youth.

The Dalai Lama, in Ancient Wisdom Modern World: Ethics for the New Millennium (London: Abacus, Time Warner Books UK, 2000 p.192) stresses that education ‘constitutes one of our most powerful weapons in our quest to bring about a better, more peaceful, world.’ He emphasizes the need to open children’s eyes to the needs and rights of others, so that their actions have a universal dimension, and they develop their ‘natural feelings of empathy so that they come to have a sense of responsibility towards others.’ He reminds us that traditionally it has been assumed that ethical and human values would be taught through a child’s religious upbringing rather than in mainstream state education. With the declining influence of religion and faith in family life this vital part of a child’s education has become neglected. The Dalai Lama proffers three guidelines for the education of our children. First, he says, we need to awaken their consciousness to basic human values by showing them how these are relevant to their future survival, rather than presenting them as solely an ethical or faith issue. Then we must teach them how to discuss and debate, to understand the value of dialogue rather than violence for resolving conflict. That was a skill seen to be sadly lacking over the last few days on our streets. And finally, (although thankfully this did not appear to be in an issue this last week), there is the urgent need to teach children that differences of race, faith, culture, while important to preserve, are nevertheless secondary to the equal rights of us all from whatever background to be happy. (And of course this is best done in the security of a close loving family unit. But that is also another issue for me to take up and write about in another post.)
Regrettably the purpose of education as seen in most of our traditional schools is to train people for jobs, rather than to be the rounded and spiritually grounded citizens of tomorrow, and we are even failing in that purpose for many of our kids. Our education system is shackled by the needs of exams and syllabuses and league tables. And for those of little academic prowess the system does not seem to provide enough suitable alternatives – apprenticeships for learning a useful trade, for example. Wouldn’t it be good if in the future more of our schools come to be judged not only on their position in academic league tables but on how successfully they turn out well rounded, happy, respectful, useful, empathic and spiritual citizens?

And if school does nothing for them, where else can our youth discover a sense of belonging, a sense of value to society, a sense of community? Because it is surely when a community breaks up that we see aimless and marginalized children, where knife, gun and drug cultures flourish, alongside lawlessness, graffiti and a general loss of respect for one and all.

Whilst it seems clear to me that we are failing our children, there are plenty of examples of good work quietly going on beyond the public gaze, where kids are being helped to develop a sense of worth and belonging, a sense of purpose. There are places where families are supported in local networks, where children are made to feel loved and wanted rather than part of a ‘problem’. In the longer term the most effective initiatives will be those that cut across the ‘them and us’ divide, avoid any kind of social exclusion and foster a broad inclusiveness for all.
This is all about building what Robert Putnam calls ‘social capital’, through social networks and mutual assistance. Because this is not a problem unique to England.In the hopeful book, Better Together: Restoring the American Community, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005) Robert Putnam and Lewis Feldstein tell the stories of twelve such initiatives, from neighborhood groups to a Fortune 500 company, from a
church to a website, but all in their unique ways helping to build real community that has lasted and is respected as such.

So let’s all start looking at the ‘communities’ where we live. Consider your church, your kids’ school and your neighborhood. We can all add to that list our own places of work and leisure. How many real community characteristics are evident? How holistic is your child’s education? Are the kids and youth all valued, or are there dangerous pockets of disaffection. Do we have the opportunity, as governor, teacher or parent, to guide towards a more holistic education, and to love a lout or to hug a hoodie?

Postscript: I am delighted to see that Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams speaking in the House of Lords earlier today said that education itself needs to be rebuilt, as the building of "character" and "virtue" has faded over the past two decades. He says there are no "quick answers", but it's not just about discipline but about the ethos of educational institutions. Exactly so!