As humans, we like to conceptualize and categorize experience as a means of understanding it. We like to order and prioritize our understanding so we can both negotiate and navigate the terrain of what is known and unknown.

It is fundamental to humans to “share and share alike”. With our families and communities we share food, water, shelter, love, friendship, common values, language, beauty, Nature and culture.

It is also fundamental to humans to trade.

As interconnections between peoples and communities expanded across lands and continents, so did the idea of trade. Out of that emerged the concept of money, providing a common denominator of value.

Imagine that Isaiah had a bushel of grapes and Mohammed had one of beans. They agreed on the relative value of each and as each desired some of what the other had, they exchanged.

To make this process easier in addressing any number of different goods, the common denominator emerged as money, from stones, trinkets and beads to then gold as a means of measuring value.

This was useful because Mohammed may not always want grapes or Isaiah beans, so this common language of the equalizer and definer of value, money, became useful and wildly popular.

It later became more sophisticated, of course, giving rise to banks that extended loans and credit, and leverage was also conceived as was interest: making money on money, derivatives and the like. Dealing with money became its own business and system of metering value.

This article doesn’t aim to provide a history of trade, money or banking, but rather to look at what has happened over time in the pursuit of money over the interest in value, especially of human values. It is to highlight the human tendency to aggregate and even hoard, extract, pillage and plunder at the expense of other people, of Nature Herself or whether there’s a more enlightened way we can relate to Earth and each other.

It’s clear that for these actions, we all pay the price due to the destruction of life and the ecosystem. Just so that the few will profit at the expense of everyone else? This is not a sustainable or desirable system that when stretched much farther, will snap, and our next evolution might be a revolution.

Enlightened self-interest

We do want to ask: Is this Capitalism at work? Did Adam Smith really have this profound inequality in mind when he wrote *The Wealth of Nations”? I don’t think so. It is more accurate to say that the big industrialists and now, Big-Tech giants have distorted Smith’s ideas to serve their own selfish aspirations.

Adam Smith advocated people pursuing their own self-interest with the belief that such pursuit, based on market forces such as competition, would serve everyone. But we see that that has simply backfired. It simply isn’t true. Instead, monopolies develop, the rich get richer, and the poor, as my esteemed mother used to say, have more babies.

So I reintroduce the idea of “enlightened self-interest,” a very different idea than simply “self-interest”, something I’ve been talking about for decades. It more clearly defines self-interest as the idea that to serve others is to also serve oneself. When others are happy, I’m happy. One circle, one holistic system. It is my business to do my best to make others satisfied with the product or service which serves everyone, myself included. It’s a very different way than saying “My interest is what matters here folks even if at everyone else’s expense.”

Defining self-interest in this way as enlightened self-interest offers a path to mutual success, a very different, win-win outcome. Part of taking care of ourselves directly involves our taking care of others.

Differing ideas and assumptions about trade

What emerged over time were quite different concepts of how best to manage a society and its economy. Getting back to basics, the word economy originates with the ancient Greek word “oikonomia”, or “home, household management.”

Hence, the economy is the basis of society as is a family’s home, perhaps even more specifically, its kitchen, where the stuff of survival is prepared, becomes the very basis of an economy.

Indigenous communities had effective ways to provide for themselves where all members were nourished and sheltered, loved, cared for and educated in the tribe’s cultural ways: language, behavior, ritual, ceremony, appreciation, respect and relationship to Mother Nature and Father Sky.

As relations with other tribes grew over time and expanded across lands, different ideas about the nature of trade emerged.

Over time, what had been a shared abundance was no longer shared evenly, but in different cultures economic categories emerged called “classes”, and later referred to as the wealthy, the middle class and the poor.

Class warfare and exploitation also emerged and the species had lost its bearings—slavery in different forms emerged across the world and business then jeopardized people and the ecosystem and has been doing so ever since.

Moving toward today

Class differences have always led to revolution because life became untenable for the poor underclass, whether it was in China, Russia, France or the United States, to name but a few.

Nature Herself abhors both a vacuum and extreme imbalance. In time, it will always correct itself, which we are witnessing again today.

The disparity between rich and poor, the Haves and the Have Nots, as the film, the great Humphrey Bogart starred in years ago, that highlighted this disparity back then, speaks loudly and clearly then and now: the system doesn’t work! Fix it Or better, fix the human mind! End greed!

As Mr. G.I. Gurdjieff frequently reminded his students “we are called to be more conscious and conscientious.” We need to re-cast our system. We are called to rise to another level of economic health and well-being in which all can reasonably survive and thrive. It’s not as difficult as one might think—it’s a re-orientation of purpose and value while stopping the perilous and irresponsible printing of money just because governments have become addicted to spending.

Differing ideas of what business is for

Many think that a business enterprise is about making money first and foremost. I suggest that it is much more than that.

Rather than arguing the point, let’s instead consider what would happen if we think of business as providing a needed product or service, the manufacture or offer of which improves people’s lives and preserves Nature, the ecosystem at the very same time?

It's like arguing about whether God exists or not. Some say yes, others no. But no matter what the idea of God may mean to the collective, whether one believes in God or not, it still connotes a level of intelligence and love permeating the Universe while providing a standard of human behavior and its potential. This is functional as an archetype in society, whether we believe in God or not. The archetype provides a standard by which to live.

If we re-cast our view that business is an action of service to the common good, from which service we also generate revenue, everything changes. Life, value and values are in proportion, harmony and balance. We would not be putting profit before people and planet but just the opposite.

People and planet before profit

This is the axis of conscious, conscientious business enterprise as the Green Party has given us a better business model.

Today, we distinguish business between this by calling it “social impact business” from regular-business-just-for-money” business.

I’m suggesting that all businesses should have a positive social impact by definition, and that there should not be “business-as-usual” at all because it is that which has put a stranglehold on the masses of people on the planet and has choked the very ecosystem itself. Why? The system is designed to enrich the owners, not its workers, despite rhetoric to the contrary.

Then some rationalize that what they are doing is good for society, like building bombs instead of studying how to diplomatically settle differences between people through the quality of communication and bonding.

Why does business-as-usual just for money exist at all?

I suggest that it is because of a series of reasons, psychological and sociological. Per the individual, it can often be tracked to a challenging or traumatic prenatal time, or particular difficulty emerging from the experience of the birth canal. It is in utero that all body systems are formed of course, and imprints into the delicate brain and nervous system take place.

If the perception of the experience is interpreted then primitively and later elaborated upon such that the individual feels that “life is rough, there isn’t enough, I’m on my own, I have to get-and-hold, get-and-hoard at any expense” then you have the making of an individual that thinks of himself more than of the family or community into which he was born. We are fully capable of reversing or inverting this to create a working, harmonious society.

Sociologically, we tend to be very influenced by our family and peers. Most want to “keep up with the Joneses next door”. This leads us down the very yellow brick road of material competition that has no good end.

Our lives are driven by purpose. Due to the interconnectedness of all things, our purpose, I suggest, recognized or not, is to help and serve life and all living things. How can this be done if we’re driven by money as priority which jeopardizes the health, well-being and safety of living things by poisoning them with toxins?

Making money in our society is a good thing when done consciously, people and planet before profit, it can work like a beautiful piece of music.

The psychological view

If the prenatal experience and typically subconscious interpretation is good, at any number of points in his development, especially the earlier years, an experience can occur in which someone feels hurt, disparaged, alienated, abandoned or abused, and the interpretation alters them such that he becomes self-obsessed instead of oriented toward the common good—this happens as well.

If someone is given the idea that “money is God” instead of a more balanced perspective of life value and human values, this too can sway someone, as can social, peer and class pressure to conform to a set of values that are self-serving instead of serving the collective, common good. We are all shaped in our families, our community, social groups and school as children and adolescents, being very influenceable as we seek to define ourselves and our own identity.

In these cases, the reptilian brain dominates consciousness instead of the higher brains of the pre-frontal cortex and the heart, which, when allowed to be more dominant, automatically gives rise to sympathy, empathy and compassion.

Needless to say, this then leads to certain behaviors that seek to provide for the common good, such as what we now call “social impact” activity in any domain.

This isn’t simply a linear matter. The power of dopamine is great. When people prioritize a sensation of making money above common sense or decency, society is in trouble as we are currently in. If we take the time to learn about these inner biochemical mechanisms, we gain leverage and eventually mastery over them. This isn’t necessarily easy, but easiness is not the point. Having a world that works for all, though, is, and it takes inner awareness and effort.

An apt analogy

Just as all food should be free of chemicals, pesticides, insecticides and any man-made poisons but should all be natural and organic by definition as Nature intended, so too, business should be socially impactful and in service to others simply by definition. The modifier could be dispensed with.

The intelligence of Nature has not been surpassed by man-made creations, which usually lead to short-term remedies and benefits but prove to be destructive long-term and that includes today’s frenzy about AI. The day will come when we see humans forgetting how to add or subtract, read a novel, write music, or even nominally think or do. It sure sounds extreme, doesn’t it?

Humans are not good at moderation. We see people on Wall Street, investing to “make a killing” and indeed, with investments in most anything these days, that’s what they end up doing: killing people, animals, air, water, soil and Nature, all to make that “extra buck”.

This is a sickness. Capital-itis. It’s a well-known affliction. It’s a result of capital-osis, an affliction that comes from having too much capital concentrated in one place. It then poisons the whole society, so it is an infection and contagion that no vaccine can do anything about.

What if entrepreneurs and investors were happy in making 30, even up to 100% net profit, instead of 150-200%, which causes harm? Would they be willing to moderate?

Instead of Big Food companies adding salt, sugar, seed oils or cheap fat to their products, which saves them pennies per bite, would they be willing to make a smaller margin and not harm their customers, which then drives up insurance premiums and medical costs for us all? They would be turning a negative drag on society instead into a contribution.

We have gone so extreme that it’s hard to see this reflection in the mirror as it's uncomfortably daunting. Yet, by definition, we are all part of the problem through our daily buying and consuming habits.

Capitalism doesn’t exist, not really

Provocative! I put it that way to raise objection. No -ism exists purely. What we call a capitalist country as the United States, has socialist aspects on every level of society and needs these to be functional.

Can you imagine if your house is on fire and you had to swipe your credit card before the fire trucks show up? Or if there’s a burglary at your house and you have to wait for credit approval before the police show up?

As it is, if you go to the hospital and need immediate assistance, depending on where you go, you may or may not get treatment, depending on your insurance. Collectively, we think of this consideration as horribly inhumane—there should be no question about administering treatment as it is in all other developed countries in the world, yes, except here in the richest of them all, the USA.

This symptom of a system that doesn’t work and a mindset that doesn’t either exemplifies the points made throughout this article.

These overall are aspects of socialist societies—free education, university, healthcare—and those who live in these countries are happier, healthier, better educated and their score on the Gross Happiness Index a lot higher than Americans.

Or how about a tax subsidy for oil companies? That’s a socialist measure (purely unnecessary) right in our faces! It actually looks more like nepotism or crony capitalism, which has nothing to do with “real”, pure capitalism.

It could be argued that our society’s strongest features come in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and public education. While each system needs massive reform, they still offer us a modicum of security and a safety net. People are being served.

In short, all systems are hybrids and the use of the words “socialist, communist, Marxist” are used by people who simply want to cast slurs based on the absurdly low-level understanding of their meaning. All systems are indeed hybrids and need to be. So-called “Communist China” is the most glaring example, so-called Communist yet boasting the second largest number of billionaires in the world and the second largest economy.

Companies that do well by doing good

There is good news in regard to business being for the common good. There are thousands of companies in the U.S. and in the world that provide high quality, valuable goods and services that do good while providing customers reasonable prices, and do very well.

As green economist Hazel Henderson reminded us over and again, in business, there are multiple bottom lines, and money is just one. Satisfaction and heart-based fulfillment are others. Preserving Earth, not exploiting her, is another.

This kind of holistic, systems thinking is what is needed instead of the extremely neurotic perspective of quarterly earnings, which is, in essence, “investing for dummies”. Russia, Japan and China were recognized decades ago and earned praise for their long-term planning in business and in all aspects of society, with China being the best.

The Social Venture Network, with companies such as Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, The Body Shop, Aveda and so many others, led the way in the U.S. to forge a new consciousness into business with the holistic view of multiple bottom lines, zero waste, biomimicry and other eco-sensitive practices.

The pleasure of service is a great sensation and brings with it great fulfillment. So many people all day do things for each other and live lives that the materially wealthy may never know anything about unless they practice a similar activity themselves. Hence, the idea of being materially rich but spiritually impoverished is quite prevalent among the upper class.

Hope for the future in conscious business

Realizing that our personal health and well-being are truly our greatest wealth, taking care of ourselves and loved ones is our first “job”, through being present and through our business enterprise, whatever that may be.

To expand the paradigm, what if everyone is one of “our loved ones”? What if we lived and did business per the universal principle: “treat others as you would want them to treat you”?

When we balance these variables well, using our heart and pre-frontal cortex instead of by our rapacious and sometimes barbaric, ancient survival brain, we can create a society that works for one and all.