Principles for a Virtuous Economy

I’ve often spoken of the desirability of the country benefiting from a Virtuous Economy rather than the exploitative, extractive, grotesquely unequal, cartelised, profiteering, shareholder obsessed and anti-citizen economy that we now endure.

I do not accept the view that base motives are acceptable and that the economy will automatically translate them into benefits for everyone. The worse the motive, the worse will be the outcome – either absolutely or relatively. This is the normal consequence of malign actions. A virtuous economy would see better motives and, I firmly believe an improved and much fairer set of outcomes to the immense benefit of the common good.

But while the general tenet of the social value of virtuous motivation should at least be appealing if not patently obvious, what should be the actual principles and the specific virtues that underpin a virtuous economy and by which companies, governments and individuals should abide? I suggest that they should include the following:

·     Loyalty – This is rapidly becoming a near forgotten corporate virtue. Loyalty to longstanding and decent principles, to the country, to the community, to fellow citizens as customers, to vulnerable individuals and to the workforce and, I almost forgot, to the shareholders.

·     Moderation – Meaning, for example, companies making good and useful products sold at fair and moderate prices for a reasonable profit to which no-one could object.

·     Respect – Companies, Governments and other organisations showing through their actions respect to all citizens, in particular their customers or electors, the workforce and the environment.

·     Truthfulness – Displayed, for example, by not promoting deceptive products or using confusing or concealed pricing, no ambiguous or misleading advertising (for example, as is so often the case with ‘health’ products). No breaking of promises. No claims for credit where it is not due.

These to be exhibited in place of the all too common current vices of disloyalty, contempt, greed, deception and selfishness. We are into the realm of misinformation and indeed conspiracy - for example with ‘industries’ acting, and being allowed to act, as cartels in respect of pricing, barriers to entry and much else besides.

Corporate disrespect involves treating customers, especially and inexcusably elderly and more vulnerable people, as profits fodder. There is also bribery by vested interests - for example, of political parties to adopt policies that intentionally inhibit legislative reforms which would be in the public interest but which would also decrease private profits.

When properly implemented, virtuous consequences could be thought of as being exhibited by the economy itself through its structure, but it is the actions, rules and, to link to another topic, the dispositions of the people that implement them that are ultimately responsible for the economy’s moral quality. So it is on these that we should focus our attention. What might these dispositions be? In my view they would certainly include:

·     Seeking to eliminate economic injustice, exploitation and unfairness. This relates to the classical virtue of justice.

·     Valuing the individual. Society consists, in the overwhelming majority, of individual people who are worthy of respect and who are entitled to freedom, security, useful employment and a good measure of happiness.

·     Beyond the individual and family, valuing community and nation through consideration to other citizens and seeking to enhance the common good, beginning with those who have least.

·     Valuing and respecting democracy, its institutions and its procedures. The most valuable 'institution' we have is democracy itself. If our version of democracy is constructed to deny the electorate proper choices, if it is manipulated and abused to further commercial interests there will be a lack of respect for it. And if democracy is undermined, so is the economy that operates within it, so also is society and the individuals that comprise it.

·     Being truthful, accountable and living with integrity. Integrity can be seen as honest self-accountability. More widely, accountability should be to the whole of society not just to particular groups (such as political party supporters, donors or co-religionists). Truthfulness, another of the classical virtues, would be rewarded by ordinary citizens far more often than is generally recognised, although it does call for considerable courage.

·     Respect and loyalty are integral to a virtuous economy. Respect and truthfulness are essential for a virtuous polity and for a healthy democracy.

·     Helping to create harmony and cultivating inclusion. A harmonious common life is the core of a unified society. Exclusion diminishes those who do the excluding every bit as much as those who are excluded.

·     Recognising the value of stewardship throughout society. Stewardship – helping to look after and preserve what is important to community and country - by all the members of a society can contribute more to the common good than most top down 'leadership' which, in fact, has much to answer for.

These dispositions along, no doubt, with a number of others, would be held by a ‘citizenry of good intent’ and put into practice in both their private and professional lives. They would also be reflected in the economic and social policies of government.

But all this, of course, we do not have in today’s society. The state of the economic and social system in this country is at root a problem in morals and morale and it is up to us, we the people, Everyman and Everywoman, to do something about it.

The political class that became established through this system and which clings to its power relationships and questionable practices (while pressing change on others) will never change itself or the system from which they profit despite their oft-repeated promises which, as we have seen, are all too easily broken.

And we should be clear that there is no magic 'invisible hand' of market self-regulation that we can rely on to steer us clear of the consequences of this value-free condition. There never was - this has been one of the biggest economic hoaxes of all time. To suppose there is some wondrous economic system that will transmute base motives - such as extractive greed - into golden benefits for all of society is a convenient fiction equivalent in truth to the medieval belief in Alchemy.

One is also reminded of the computer metaphor GIGO, Garbage In - Garbage Out in relation to the quality of data input and the worth of the subsequent output when the program has run. In the present context we will also have GIGO, read as Greed In – Greed Out or, in terms of notorious personalities, Geckos In – Geckos Out.

In view of the constant references to growth as the way out of our problems it should be understood that economic growth at any given percentage rate cannot be sustained indefinitely, as we should have known, since percentages are an exponential phenomenon. No economy can be above the natural order of things – nature abhors exponentials as much as vacuums.

And it should be clearly understood that the ‘market’ is not a part of the natural order either – the dominant western conception of which is not an absolute, it is an entirely human concept – one constructed by the private beneficiaries - rather than one that should have been shaped to serve wider purposes rather than frustrate them.

The economy should operate as a social market. A capitalist model will only operate in the general interest if, as Keynes pointed out, it is governed by 'gentlemanly codes of behaviour' rather than the exploitative culture that has been so evident in recent times. Nor should the pursuit of personal wealth be an end in itself. The end, as Keynes also said, should be to live 'wisely, agreeably and well' - qualities which, if not wholly describing it, are certainly consistent with a virtuous economy.

The economy should be at the service of society rather than a cosseted entity existing independently of it to which society is expected to bow the knee and take the consequences. It should be an honour system in which respect, trust and regard for the individual form the bedrock. Individual citizens, private companies, the public sector, voluntary organisations and Government, both national and local, should share a vision of the good of the nation and take personal, policy and commercial decisions accordingly, seeking to operate always within the Common Good to move towards a land of found content.

The virtues of Loyalty, Respect, Truthfulness and Moderation along with the associated dispositions, a citizenry of good intent, the concept of stewardship, commonly held and socially oriented values and even, with due consent, some ancillary ‘leadership of good intent’ in certain areas, will be the secure foundations of the Virtuous Economy and the basis on which it operates to enhance the Common Good.

Reflections on Dreams

Dreams, their origins and their interpretation, have been a subject of intense speculation for people at all levels of society since ancient times. However, unlike the prevailing views that were held in antiquity, in modern times relatively few of those people having an active interest in brain activity have thought that preoccupation with the meaning of dreams is justified, but the purposes and process of dreaming have intrigued even the sceptics.

Here, however, as someone who has always taken a keen interest in the subject I do want to say something about the content of dreams, my understanding of their possible meaning(s), how these might be accessed and what we may infer from them about our personal lives, our nature - and also about reality, particularly in respect of time and communication.

The first point to clear up is that in my opinion at least, although some interesting things may be learnt, unless you are neurotic your dreams will not tell you very much that is absolutely fundamental about yourself that you do not already know.

Your dreams may however reflect what you do know about yourself in a variety of ways and employ a wide variety of images and settings in so doing. And there will be especially rich dreams that can be seen as having more than one level of meaning. The connections between these layers can be interesting.

Much of the classical imagery of dreams was set out by Sigmund Freud, particularly in his monumental and path-breaking work The Interpretation of Dreams. Quite a few people today are no doubt still unhappy about some aspects of Freud’s analysis and the erotic imagery (trains, tunnels, piers, clock towers, trees etc.) of which he wrote but I think that at one level it tends to be correct (but why a clock tower rather than a train you might fruitfully ask).

Some dream images may have more than one personal association and they may evoke more than one emotion – for example involving anxiety (as may be instanced by the possibility of missing a train) as well as more pleasurable sensations. There is usually some food for thought there I think.

Carl Jung, once a colleague of Freud, gave less prominence to sexual imagery than Freud himself and some of what he said added richness to Freud’s perceptions on dreams. Jung introduced other images too, such as the well known mandalas.

Furthermore, most people will have their own set of visceral images, but I will not go into any detail here. I forget whether it was Freud or Jung who pointed out that in dreams some groups composed of three elements may refer to the male genitalia - these could be trios of people or animals for instance.

But in my opinion there is a lot more to the understanding of dreams than this. One of Freud’s perceptions was that the elements used in the composition of one’s dreams make use of what he termed ‘the day’s residues’. These are bits and pieces of our mostly mundane experiences during the preceding day that, as the modern understanding goes, the brain is likely to be sorting out for longer term storage or eventual removal. But these residues may be combined and built on to produce a particular story-like dream.

How may dreams be interpreted? The first thing to make clear is that an off-the-shelf guide book approach to images and their supposed significance simply will not do. There is in fact only one person who can interpret a dream properly and thoroughly, and that is the dreamer themselves since the dream uses their residues and personal images, and its meaning relates to their experiences either recent or from years ago – quite often childhood, puberty or experiences with a high emotional charge.

Other parties may gently aid in the dream interpretation, usually by way of a well placed suggestion or two, and by being generally supportive and encouraging in the process but, importantly, directly intervening no further than to ask the occasional question such as: “What were you feeling at this point in the dream?” or “Have you had this dream before?” If you do this, my advice is not to have eye contact with the other person – sit at an angle.

One factor that is very important in interpretation is the feeling tone in dreams. What emotions accompanied the dream or certain parts of it – excitement, anxiety, awe or typically a fusion of many feelings? This is the area where the unravelling is likely to be especially productive. Productive, that is, primarily in terms of interest rather than dramatic revelations.

Centuries ago dreams were given great weight when they related to major events that were supposedly coming down the track from the future. I’m profoundly suspicious about the verity of such reported historic or religious dreams and suspect that many of them in fact never occurred but were stories aimed to further self-interest, promote an agenda, manipulate either the ‘masses’ or Kings (in which case it’s best to be positive and right!)

I must say that have no time for seeing dreams (or anything else for that matter) as ‘omens’ with their predominant focus on the negative, on helplessness and thus the diminishment of the role of free will and the effectiveness of action to counter possible very real threats such as impending war.

But I expect many of us have had what appear to be glimpses of future events in our personal lives. I’ve had a few of these myself but before going overboard one should realise that there are seven billion potential dreamers every night, making some two hundred trillion dreams that occur worldwide in a lifetime! Some of these dreams will surely look like predictions but, as rational analysis reveals, could also be a product of chance. But maybe not all of them – and there is another sort of future related dream too.

These are those dreams where, on waking, you do not sense a reference to the future or even remember the dream unprompted. But an apparently run of the mill (if slightly odd in feeling) and maybe forgotten dream may leap back into mind when an event occurs in the future that was ‘seen’ in the dream. In my case these always have several characteristics in common – the time period is always the following day, the matter is always utterly trivial, it always has a ‘visceral’ nature, it is highly visual, and there is no way of seeing that a particular dream may be of this nature or of nurturing one.

As an aside, this question of timing seems, from my experience at least, to be important in such direct interactions as there may be between people’s minds. Years ago there were many instances where the first few words that a close relative was going to say came into my head. These always made up just a short phrase and the time gap was always one or at most two seconds. This phenomenon no longer occurs however. The tenuous connection with dreams was the relaxed state of my mind at the time of occurrence. But I digress.

It is as if, to extend Freud’s concept, such future-perceptive dreams include some of tomorrow’s residues. If there is anything to this, and of course there may not be, there are profound implications for the nature of time. But then, there have to be profound differences from our day to day impressions of time. A straight line, clockwork time simply cannot be. It is woven in with space and space time is warped by matter and there cannot have been a straight line infinity of time preceding the present.

I have sometimes though that of the temporal triumvirate of the past, the present and the future, the only one with a questionable reality is the present. This may sound surprising but by way of explanation, if you imagine yourself sitting in a room opposite someone, the sound of their voice comes out of the past as does their visual image (at a different, much faster speed) since both take a time to reach you. The processing of this information and your thoughts also takes time so that ‘the present’ is a smeared combination of incoming information and the brain’s work to render it comprehensible. This will apply to other sensory inputs too. In terms of the reality of the future, we have previous experience of reaching futures 100% of the time so, hopefully, we can expect this to continue.

My subjective experience suggests the possibility of tonight’s dreams including some of tomorrow’s residues as well as today’s so that ‘dream time present’ would also include elements of the very near future to be reached following the exercise of albeit constrained free will. One can envisage a sort of asymmetric bell-type curve of the probabilities of residue inclusion in dreams with the much greater probabilities being from the preceding day.

One other thing to look out for when interpreting a dream which appears to be significant is that the true focus of the dream may not be on the central character but one who is either less well defined or apparently in a lesser role.

To give one example, I had a dream when on holiday which caused me great concern about the welfare of a colleague who was the central character in the dream. In parts of the dream I was accompanied by a figure to my left and slightly behind me as we rushed to find my friend. The concerns I had did not evaporate and on my return to work I felt I must ask my colleague if she was alright. She said that she was fine but asked if I had heard about Godfrey. It turned out that poor Godfrey had committed suicide whilst I was away. It was then that I recognised the figure beside me in the dream.

Returning to Freud’s views on dreams, he placed great emphasis on the role of wish fulfilment even when the ‘wish’ coming to light may appear to be a highly negative or embarrassing one - and one which may be steadfastly denied by the dreamer. This idea can be revealing and we should pay close attention to it in the interpretation of dreams even though its presence is not always obvious and the supposed ‘wish’ is not always palatable.

So there is, after all, the potential to learn something from our dreams although I would emphasize that in my opinion it is more a question of there being a number of aspects of interest rather than dreams being of central importance for fundamental and heretofore unrealised self-understanding.

The Question of Free Will

Do human beings have free will – or are what we see as our ‘choices’ and our future in fact strictly determined? I don’t see people running amok if the ‘wrong’ answer is given but it is important nonetheless to have some idea of where we stand and to give reassurance as to our independent identity.

This is a fundamental question that has, through the ages, received the attention of some mighty thinkers and it is still being posed today, informed opinion, as so often in other matters, taking its familiar oscillating trajectory. But, in my opinion that the answer to this question is a little more involved than simply a bald yes or no. Rather, I see the ‘dilemma’ as artificial.

A cynic might suppose that long established religions have a vested interest in the existence of free will (or else there would be no sin, no punishment and one less need to belong to religious groups) while science has, in times past, from time to time seemed to point towards the deterministic alternative as, surprisingly, have some more recent philosophers.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century at the highpoint of development of the world view of Newtonian Mechanics (which I will here caricature as quantified forces acting on particles like billiard balls) it seemed that given enough information about the relative positions and movements of the particles at any one time (and some kind of external and utterly vast computing capacity) the future could be predicted with certainty.

But the Romantic Movement had already reacted against the classical scientific mechanistic picture, and the ‘clockwork’ model was finally shattered by the advent of Quantum Mechanics and Field Theory. Even though the approach of quantum mechanics with its irreducible uncertainties has replaced the classical mechanics, it is not entirely clear that the classical conclusion regarding free will cannot be re-cast within this framework.

The great scientist Albert Einstein, although a co-founder of quantum theory, did not find its philosophical implications consistent with the world view that he preferred, and accordingly he expressed the opinion that – if we but knew it – the future was as entirely determined as the past.

I must say that while I heartily yearn for Einstein’s world view in general to be proved right (caricatured as ‘God does not play dice’ – i.e. there is something with a more defined structure underlying quantum mechanics) the free will conclusion is the one aspect that I would least wish to be true.

Einstein however, positioned himself away from the mainstream of developments in quantum theory. Even so, excursions into the weird world of the quantum have a tendency to produce a mystical train of thought- such for example as this: Perhaps the quantum world is the substrate of the mind of God and ‘reality’, and we ourselves, are thoughts within it.

There may be world views finding their origins in quantum theory that bear striking comparison with some (admittedly selected) of the assertions of eastern religions. These were presented very eloquently by Fritjof Kapra in his still popular book The Tao of Physics some years ago. The essential understanding that is relevant our subject here is that all times may merge into an eternal present. Kapra also draws our attention to the eastern view that opposite poles are manifestations of an underlying unity.

The apparent opposite poles that we are considering here are of course free will and determinism. I say ‘apparent’ since there is a unifying idea - the notion of constraint. Determinism would then be seen as perfectly constrained choice, there being only one possible outcome. Complete free will on the other hand would be the absence of any constraints – or would it?

It has been pointed out many times that without rules, without the ‘laws’ of physics (or indeed the Highway Code) there would exist only choiceless chaos. In fact we would not be here to make any choices at all, and even if in some Poincare event of unimaginable unlikelihood (now more often thought of as the question of ‘Boltzmann Brains’ arising if there was an infinite universe) an individual was accidentally and randomly assembled that individual would be unable to predict, even statistically, the outcomes of his actions and thus have no paths at all to follow.

So both determinism and free will can be seen as involving choice under constraint. The questions that remain are how much constraining is going on and is there an ideal level of constraint. In some ways the situation here is similar to one of the points that I made in Arne Saknussem. Different mixtures of constraints give rise to differing richness of choice possibilities and the ideal would produce a maximal range of high quality choices.

When you consider the orderliness of Nature and the small number of types of physical forces and constraints that there are (with the prospect of even fewer given the ongoing work of physicists to produce a unified theory) it seems likely to me that we are already close to that ideal level – a highly desirable circumstance with minimal, though essential constraints.

These are the main reasons why I think that the supposed dilemma between free will and determinism is an artificial and unproductive one. We can regard ourselves as having, as it were, freedom under the law (s of nature) and making choices accordingly. All roads do eventually lead to the Rome of choice.

Furthermore, in practical terms we must surely act as if we have genuinely free choices, constrained or not. Without this perspective there would be no sense of responsibility that extended beyond the self. So my position is that we can confidently go out and make our own (though hopefully not always immediately self-serving) choices and take responsibility for them.

Interior Odyssey…Into the depths…

This image, which I have included in Ruminations, was published in the edition of Jules Verne’s famous story ‘A Journey to the Centre of the Earth’, a book that I first read as a child. The picture shows the adventurers on their initial descent into the Snaefells volcano of Verne’s imagination. I have since come to understand that the story can be read on more than one level – as it were!

Verne’s explorers made their descent into the depths of this immensely atmospheric Icelandic volcano as Verne imagined them and plumbed the passageways therein. These led ever downwards, eventually to an undiscovered primeval world. Given what is known about human brain structure, need this, I ask, be so very unlike a journey into our own minds?

The famous psychologist / analyst / healer / writer Carl Jung made just such an epic (and hazardous) descent into his own personal unconscious and described his interactions with the ‘archetypes’ that he believed that he discerned therein. He also made his 'discovery' of the Jungian collective unconscious and gave a description of it.

This was an interior odyssey, a Snaefells journey par excellence. Fortunately, for us lesser mortals, it is not necessary to imitate Jung’s high risk exercise to find what we may be looking for within the depths of ourselves.

Our own interior odysseys should be conducted with open-minded awareness and could use some of the approaches mentioned in earlier posts. With the addition of observations from trusted others, we will surely find abundant imperfections - and lopsidedness too - but some of these aspects will also have good positive possibilities if integrated into the personal whole. And some of our own lost worlds may be rediscovered.

Such an inward, integrative journey of rediscovery, transcendence or integration of self is likely to be a long one, but don’t expect it to be a ‘Road to Damascus’ experience - mistrust it if it seems as if it is. Outside of tales meant to inspire, nothing that good is likely to be instant and effortless. Simply remind yourself that: ‘the road is hard, but I am strong’ and you will complete your own interior odyssey as Jules Verne’s adventurers completed theirs.