Living by means and ends
Timothy Phillips reports on a stimulating spring gathering in Edinburgh
Small is beautiful; scale is essential. It is easy to see what I can do locally. It is much harder to see how my local choices affect the global economy. Are my decisions irrelevant, or am I the butterfly flapping its wings in the Rockies and causing a heatwave in Europe? How can I and my Friends be that butterfly – and produce intended change?
The Spring Gathering of the Quakers and Business Group, held in Edinburgh in early April, studied how local actions focused on the common good and how individuals’ needs can be enhanced by a right relationship with the global scale of banks and industry. Without using modern ways of collaborating worldwide, we are all the poorer. Banks enable trade around the world, and using products manufactured in far away China helps both Europeans and Chinese. However, it is also true that the bigger we get, the harder we fall when hubris takes hold. Simple greed or poor system design (through ignorance, selfish intent or boredom), all distort sharing the wealth created by humanity’s efforts to make life more comfortable. A lack of duty to the common good and a weak spiritual sense of how humanity fits within the great scheme of things can result in today’s barrenness, damage to our common home and growing gaps between rich and poor.
Eigg Community members, on their island in the Scottish Inner Hebrides, wrestle with being a self-governing trust, generating their electricity and nurturing their island home for all, today and tomorrow. It’s complicated, but they listen to each other and seek unity. They have a five-kilowatt-electricity maximum in their homes. Their greener, democratic tariff cuts out if they use more. Could we accept a limit here, to help sustainability? Do you know your usage? What could be our home and business maxima? What electricity-hungry machines can you do without?
Our visitor from the Royal Bank of Scotland received Friends’ customary loving hearing. We learned more about how banks can be essential –in their reach to the work of the smallest, as well as the largest, of their customers. We learned how enthusiasm for the ‘Equator Principles’ on social and environmental responsibility in banking can live within an organisation being damaged by hubris.
The Scottish writer and activist, Alastair McIntosh, spoke of humanity’s spiritual core and its essential place in our creativity, especially when we work together in complex harmony over time and distance. Without an ethical steer from one’s faith, the risk of the greedier aspects of one’s nature sliding imperceptibly into dominance is far greater. Top bankers are still not sufficiently concerned about the obscure social value of some of their activities, the inadequate design of the financial system, and the disparity of their rewards. Yes, they provide the wherewithal for trade, but why must so much harm be sustained?
The system can become better balanced: the voiceless can be heard. We can all replace consumerism with more thoughtful, conscious consumption. All can use money only to lubricate exchange and so remove its power to impoverish others via extortionate interest. With God’s help, when will we?
We left refreshed with new ideas to try out, on bad money creation, good governance for rewards and sharing, and more besides. Join the conversation!
Alastair’s Q&B Lecture at: http://www.quakersandbusiness.org.uk/sg2011.html
The Spring Gathering Minute at: http://bit.ly/e61Cif
The Newsletter at: http://bit.ly/eES4HU
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