Ecology, Economics, Ethics: The Three E’s of an Integrated Study of Humankind

Posted on 2022/10/19 by tetsukoizumi

Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

Thirty years have passed since a number of insightful scholars drew our attention to the broken circle among ecology, economics, and ethics, and argued for the need to mend that broken circle if we are to value the Earth as the sustainable home for humans.* The sad fact of the matter is that ecology, economics, and ethics, as these academic disciplines are practiced today, are not linked in a way that would provide a unified support for promoting sustainable development for a single nation, let alone for the global community of nations.

Economics, despite its privileged status as a discipline that has direct impact on social policy, has yet to incorporate important insights obtained in ecology into its theoretical foundation. Nor, for that matter, do economists admit the need to incorporate ethical values in formulating social policy. In fact, economists working in the mainstream tradition continue to prescribe the policy of pursuing higher standards of living in terms of per capita GNP, paying little attention to the damage such pursuit does to the natural environment.

With the mounting evidence showing the strain the universal pursuit of economic growth imposes on the natural environment, it is clear that ecology, economics and ethics need to be integrated into a unified discipline. While international institutions such as the United Nations Development Program and the World Bank try to support programs that propose to promote sustainable development, these programs would not go very far unless, and until, ecology, economics, and ethics are integrated into a unified discipline that will serve as a guide for social policy and people’s conduct of their lives at the global level.

Ecology, economics, and ethics, while not recognized as respectable academic disciplines that they have become, used to define an unbroken circle of human inquiry until the emergence of modern industrial societies. In classical Greece, the three disciplines were united as the science of managing the household economy in order to secure good life for its members. These disciplines were also united in agrarian societies because the code of responsible behavior on the part of humans was fairly transparent as our subsistence crucially depended on maintaining a sustainable relationship with the natural environment.

The circle linking ecology, economics, and ethics started to be broken with the emergence of industrial societies. For one thing, the industrial mode of production did not require the same kind of sensitivity towards the natural environment as the agricultural mode of production. For another, life in the cities, which has become a predominant way of life for a majority of population, cut off the sense of connectedness with nature for them. Most importantly, the brand of economics that emerged with industrialization has been promoting the myth of human progress defined in terms of the rising material standards of living.

Mending the broken circle among ecology, economics, and ethics requires that we develop an integrated discipline that connects these three disciplines within the unified space of human existence. Considering that we humans are a biological species endowed with spirituality living as societal members, the unified space of human evolution consisting of the three spheres of the bio-sphere, the socio-sphere, and the psycho-sphere can be considered as forming an integrated space of interaction among different aspects of human existence.

In the context of the unified space of human evolution, ecology can be defined as the disciple that studies the bio-sphere. By the bio-sphere is meant the space of interaction among all natural systems such as animals, plants, lands, and oceans. It is the space of interaction between living and non-living systems, in short, between life and matter. The bio-sphere is the source of “environmental capital” in the creation of wealth in the livelihood of humans.

Economics can be defined as the discipline that studies the socio-sphere, which is the space of interaction among all social systems such as families, groups, organizations, and nations. As members of these social systems, we humans interact with fellow human beings and man-made institutions and technologies in the conduct of social life. The socio-sphere can thus be defined as the space of interaction between humans and man-made institutions and technologies, in short, between labor and machine, with these two terms more broadly conceived than they are in conventional economics. The socio-sphere is the source of “social capital” as embodied in such things as customs, conventions, laws, and regulations.

Ethics can be defined as the discipline that studies the psycho-sphere, which is the space of interaction among all cultural systems such as languages, art works, stories, and myths. It is the space of interaction between human symbols and the human mind, in short, between language and mind. The psycho-sphere is the source of “human capital” such as creativity, inventiveness, self-discipline, and the work ethic.

Ecology, as a broadly conceived study of the nature of ecological interaction between life and matter, includes all of the natural sciences from biology to chemistry, from cosmology to physics. Economics, as the study of the socio-sphere, cannot be dissociated from the biophysical and ethical foundations of human existence, and studies, in addition to how different societies go about organizing economic life in the space of interaction between labor and machine, how different societies go about combining environmental capital, social capital, and human capital in promoting people’s wealth and welfare. Ethics, in the sense it is defined here, includes all of the human sciences such as psychology, information sciences, and the humanities. Most importantly, it includes environmental ethics, which studies the ethical mode of conduct in the unified space of human evolution.

What unites all the systems that exist in the unified space of human evolution can be regarded as the process of “self-organization,” where that term is broadly interpreted to refer to the process of “pattern formation,” “configuration,” and “conformation.” Interpreted as the process of generating patterns of connection among things in nature, the concept of self-organization finds its counterpart in the Buddha’s idea of sankhara, the process of formation and dissolution of all systems in nature.

While many efforts are now being made to conduct our social life compatible with the sustainability of the bio-sphere, what is crucial is a change in the people’s consciousness about the fragile nature of our existence in that sphere. While economists have traditionally avoided getting involved in the debate about values, there is simply no way to get around the question of values when it comes to the challenge of promoting sustainable development. If social policy for sustainable development prescribed by economists is to be effective, a change in the people’s values will be essential.

What is also needed is a change in our idea about the progress of humankind. We need to abandon the conventional idea of progress measured in material terms as an increase in per capita income, for there is no possibility of sustainable economic growth in a finite universe we live in. It is imperative, therefore, that we move away from the notion of progress defined in material terms and conceive of sustainable development as the process of viable transformation of all systems in the unified space of human evolution.

* See, in particular, Bormann, F.H., and S.R. Kellert, Ecology, Economics, Ethics: The Broken Circle, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991, and Daly, H.E., and K.N. Townsend, Valuing the Earth: Economics, Ecology, Ethics, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992.

Globalization From Within: Restoring the Global Village as the Home for All Humanity

Posted on 2022/09/22 by tetsukoizumi

Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

Globalization, seen in the context of the evolution of civilizations, has brought about some notable changes in the way challenges and responses between civilizations take place. For one thing, it is now possible to promote communication and cross-fertilization between civilizations with varieties of new means of communication which globalization as the information revolution has brought into our lives. There are some indications that challenges and responses in the world of the twenty-first century are giving rise to a global civilization of a sort—from an increasing participation in the citizens’ movement for basic human rights to an expanding awareness about our common fate as a species in the global village. While these are hopeful developments, there are other indications that threaten the cohesion and stability of the world as a system of civilizations, including terrorist attacks, ethnic conflicts, and military invasions.

Globalization, in view of these hopeful developments as well as troubling events taking place in the world around us, must be said to have been a blessing as well as a curse in the evolution of civilizations. The upshot is that the world of the twenty-first century is yet to develop a truly global civilization. The United Nations, while it has tried to develop a global civilization with its efforts to promote universal human rights and sustainable development, is unlikely to become a world government with the power to enforce its laws and regulations. If the top-down approach is unlikely to work, it is up to each and every one of us to take up the challenge of creating a truly global civilization so that the global village becomes the place we can all call “home.”

Every individual, as a societal member of a specific civilization, acts in the space of social transaction of that civilization that surrounds him/her in his/her cultural, economic, and political life. At the same time, the individual inhabits in his/her own world of psyche. These two worlds—the social world of civilization and the individual world of psyche—are not independent from each other but are interdependent, linked by a network of correspondences that exist between them.

One obvious case that points to the presence of correspondence between the social world of civilization and the individual world of psyche is the sense of affinity and comfort the individual feels towards his/her own civilization as the provider of values and norms that guide him/her in social life. This does not deny that there are some individuals who feel alienated by their own civilization, finding themselves at odds with the prevailing values and norms of social life.

What, then, is the individual world of psyche like, shaped and commanded by the workings of the human mind? Like civilization, the individual world of psyche, or the psychic world, has the horizontal as well as the vertical dimension. The horizontal aspect of the psychic world is shaped and commanded by the rational mind, or Ego. It is Ego that defines the personal mental space for each individual, in which he/she forms the sense of identity separate from other individuals. However, the mental space shaped and commanded by Ego constitutes the surface structure of the psychic world. There is another layer to the psychic world, the deep structure of the psychic world, which is the world of unconsciousness shaped and commanded by Self, the term Carl Jung employs to distinguish it from Ego. (The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1969)

The world of unconsciousness is mostly hidden from the individual in the conduct of his/her daily affairs, except for occasional glimpses into it through dreams. The world of dreams is, however, the shallow part of the world of unconsciousness, for it is mostly the world of the individual unconscious. The deep part of the world of unconsciousness, the world shaped and commanded by Self, is the world of the collective unconscious, which is shared by all members of humanity, normally inaccessible to the individual except in the form of archetypes such as the Great Mother and the Wise Old Man. In order to accomplish “globalization from within”, it is essential that the individual learns to dip into the world of the collective unconscious, which is universal and shared by all members of humanity.

Correspondence between the social world of civilization and the individual world of psyche also shows up as correspondence between the outstanding characteristics of a civilization and the common personality traits shared by the members of that civilization. One mechanism by which this correspondence comes about is through what sociologists call socialization. Another mechanism is through the workings of what Freud called Super Ego (Civilization and Its Discontents, 1961). On the positive side, Super Ego helps to shape the individual’s ethical imperatives and moral sentiments. On the negative side, Super Ego for the members of one civilization can be different from that of the members of another civilization, leading to conflict and confrontation when the members from two civilizations meet.

Given that every civilization in the world today has become, more or less, a hybrid civilization through centuries of contact and communication with other civilizations, “globalization from within” will not be accomplished until every civilization evolves itself into one that incorporates the common values and norms. As civilization is something that is created and shaped by human activities by individuals as artists and philosophers, scientists and engineers, industrialists and merchants, politicians and religious leaders, it is up to each and every individual to start acting as a global citizen in his/her respective role as a member of global civilization, which defines the values and norms of the global village.

What is required of the individual is, first, to absorb the hybridity of global civilizations and, then, to transcend that hybridity to find the sense of belonging and identity in the global village shaped by that global civilization. From the psychological perspective, the task of accomplishing “globalization from within” is nothing but the task of discovering Self, which, by integrating the workings of our both conscious and unconscious minds, enables us to become one with the universe.

The spiritual traditions of the world provide us hints and instructions as to how we can go about accomplishing “globalization from within”, which goes by different terms. Hinduism calls it moksa, or liberation, which can be accomplished through jnana-marga (the path through knowledge), kama-marga (the path through work), or bhakti-marga (the path through devotion). The Buddha inherits this Hindu tradition by expounding on the path called arya-ashtangika-marga (The Noble Eightfold Path) that would accomplish “globalization from within” which he calls nirvana. When Jesus pronounces, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44), he is telling us the importance of discovering love as an agent of transforming the individual world of psyche into heaven, for love is an entity, or a form of energy, that envelopes and pervades all things in the universe. Meister Eckhart (c.1260-c1327) echoes the same advice when he says: “There is a huge silence inside each of us that beckons us into itself, and the recovery of our own silence can begin to teach us the language of heaven.” (Directions for the Contemplative Life) Each one of us must find the path of “globalization from within” that fits our temperament and orientation if we are to restore the global village as a hospitable place we can all call “home”.