Just put the following post on LinkedIn: Will we be inundated more by the physical climate or the economic and social climate created by income inequality? June 05, 2014 At a recent conference on business innovation just outside of Venice I had been invited to present a laboratory on Management as Spiritual Sadhana. The plan I brought into the room was that after getting to know the participants a bit I would discuss the impact of mindful awareness on relationships in organizations and their role in creating more humane working environments and then provide an experiential taste of what I meant. (We had only about two hours.) Many in the group felt a little out of their depth, but quickly showed interest and curiosity. In the closing discussion I ended up suggesting that it is a curious and serious error in our usual economic thinking to consider labor to be just another cost to be reduced as much as possible--at all costs. Labor is the precious and limited time of the life of a human being. How can it have a price? It may be offered to an organization for the sake of some greater good and the organization should then respond by offering to help support that persons life in the best way it can. But it has become commoditized, given a price and made a quid pro quo over which we then do battle. It should be a mutual offering into the creation of a good life for everyone--meaning all creatures, not just human beings. The result of this situation in our economic ecology is illustrated in the devastating critique of the use of capital (notice that we consider human capital a separate category!) by Thomas Piketty who demonstrates that income inequality in Europe now exceeds that of the belle epoque of the 19th century which preceded a long period of socio-economic strife worldwide. In our report back to the larger conference, both my business co-presenter and the convener of the conference became quite enthused and passionate about finding ways to promote these kinds of changes. The whole audience seemed to come alive. It was a beautiful moment for a psychologist/consultant and a CEO who is paid nothing for that service (my income derives from my professional duties. All our corporate officers serve gratis.) We are all very concerned about the enormous gathering impact of climate change on the world and its people. Given the analysis of Thomas Piketty, it may be that the more immediate tsunami in our future may come from the economic and social climate.
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 12:01:46 +0000
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