Practical Primal Philosophy II: Intrinsic Nature in Europe

In a previous blog post with the title “Practical Primal Philosophy: Meaning of ‘Intrinsic’ in ISD”, we considered the importance of having natural relations occurring naturally or essentially to a society and culture. This is important if we want to achieve sustainability and hence a future for mankind.

If natural relations are not intrinsic to society and culture then we need experts who have to work at putting these relations back and overcoming the damage done by whatever non-natural relations do occur naturally in a society and culture. This latter position with experts trying to put natural relations back and reversing the damage done by a society is that of the developed world at the moment. People at large in the developed world seem to be preoccupied with having more or larger stuff. Whilst they may be concerned about climate change, pollution, loss of biodiversity, food supply chains, food quality, and overpopulation, these issues are secondary. It is not that people do not recognise sustainability issues, it just that they have to leave them to experts and marginalise them since natural relations are not intrinsic to their society or culture.

With the knowledge we now possess of our distant evolutionary past, we know that we spent many millennia embedded in the natural world to the extent that nature and ourselves were inseparable. Take away natural supplies or food, water, warmth and shelter and mankind’s ancestors would have perished. This relationship is evident in early civilizations where nature as sun, moon, water, places or various kinds of animals gain religious significance and form part of a frequently complex and interwoven set of relations between man and his deities. Indeed one of the greatest of all western Philosophers, Aristotle, argued that all of man’s activities were extensions of nature.

If the developed world had held true to its ancient experiences, beliefs and arguments then perhaps unsustainable development would not have arisen. After all if we regard ourselves as intrinsically dependent upon nature for our well-being and ultimate survival we are less likely to allow her to be damaged – damaging nature is then equivalent to damaging ourselves.

In so many ways we are rediscovering this most fundamental of truths – that damaging nature is equivalent to damaging ourselves. The whole world is painfully waking up to this fact which underlies the whole environmental movement, environmental management, environmental accounting, climate change issues, green thought, natural health-care and so many other aspects of our lives today. But unfortunately it is a re-awakening to our relations with nature which implies that we somehow manage to forget or disregard them in the past.

The question “How did we forget our relations with nature?” is perhaps the most important one we can ask today. If we can answer this then we will understand more about where unsustainable development came from and hence find our way to more sustainable ways. Answering this question is the subject of the Intrinsic Sustainable Development book, so we do have some relevant ideas.

In Europe, Christianity put an end to many of our intrinsic relations to nature. The pre-Christian pagan people of Europe, for example the Romans and Celts, saw themselves and the natural world as being closely connected. Their innermost beliefs as expressed in their religions were based upon divinities that were inseparable from nature – they themselves were hence inseparable from nature.

But for Christians their belief in a single God came between all human relations with nature. Nature became something that God had made and now rules over with omnipotent power. Furthermore the Christian God does not live in our world; he dwells in some other world known as Heaven. Finally since God sent his son to the human world as a man, mankind became strongly differentiated from other animals and superior to them. All in all nature became a second best aspect of God’s world and it lost much of its former powers, associations, significance and relations.

It is nonetheless quite possible that man acting as a steward over God’s natural creation could have looked after nature better than he did. After all God is supposed to have made nature and man ought to take good care of it. This may have protected nature even when bereft of recognition of its naturally intrinsic relations with mankind if it were not for the French philosopher, René Descartes.

René effectively removed God – and life – from nature. He argued that God is eminently rational and that nature, our bodies included, is merely a passive machine. God became the God of Reason and nature became inert and mechanical. At this point in European history, it is no longer possible to conceive of natural relations occurring naturally or essentially to a society and culture. European society and culture had become wrapped up within its own rationality and self importance. This is how it is today in our very unsustainable world.

"Machine to Create Nature" by Jose Antonio Lanza, 2012

Behind the Mars Bar: looking deeper for sustainable food companies

Mars is the world’s largest privately owned food company with $30 billion in revenues and more than 65,000 workers around the world in 2012. It produced its first ever sustainability report recently in 2011. It was also one of the first big companies to deliver its CSR report on Facebook.

In a refreshing claim to appreciating longer time frames Paul Michaels writes in Mars's Five Principles report:  “As a private company governed by the Mars family, we think in terms of generations, not quarterly returns.” But the company does not take the step of recognising natural times scales.

Mars do have a high impact upon farming practices so adopting natural time scales would not be out of place in the company. Mars does after all call for a joint industry effort to scale up positive impacts for cocoa farmers and achieve higher yields without compromising limited natural resources so longer, more natural time scales are definitely required.

But perhaps the most significant step that Mars have taken lies in their Five Principles report. As one of the five principles, Mars have adopted Mutuality which they describe as follows:

·         A mutual benefit is a shared benefit; a shared benefit will endure.

·         We believe the standard by which our business relationships should be measured is the degree to which mutual benefits are created.

·         These benefits can take many different forms, and need not be strictly financial in nature. Likewise, while we must try to achieve the most competitive terms, the actions of Mars should never be at the expense, economic or otherwise, of others with whom we work.

According to Mars, the mutual benefits need not be financial in nature and yet they are to be the standard by which their business relations should be measured. Indeed rummaging around their website reveals a wealth measured in non-financial benefits including the sponsorship of science.

So how is Mars able to recognise these revolutionary steps in business management? At one level there is a simple answer that all companies can implement and that is they pay full attention to the knowledge we now possess of the world in which we live. A new Primal possibility of knowledge is present in the world and we are slowly taking advantage of all its exciting opportunities to make the world a better place.

The other answer is not so simple and it is likely few major companies can implement it in their present form. It is an answer that has to do with Keynes’ 1933 article on National Sufficiency:  “But experience is accumulating that remoteness between ownership and operation is an evil in the relations among men, likely or certain in the long run to set up strains and enmities which will bring to nought the financial calculation,” (see The Accountant’s Economic Revolution in the PR blog, 25^th November 2012).

Mars is a private company. It does not have to worry about maintaining a position in the financial markets. In this sense Mars has greater freedom to adapt to the emerging Primal knowledge of our world; it is not for example constrained by overweening and restricting notions of Modern good financial performance. But Mars does have remote operations created and maintained throughout its supply chain; it therefore needs to ensure that the dictates of financial performance do not reduce overall Mutuality to considerations of dominant economic aspects.

Oxfam is more critical of Mars. In its assessment of the Big 10 food companies, Oxfam ranks Mars with a 30% score which is a “Poor” performance lying in fifth place behind Nestle, Unilever, Coca-Cola and Pepsico. Middle-ranking Mars received low scores with regards to supporting women and protecting land rights, but did better with transparency and small-scale farmers. 

Big 10 Food Companies Sustainability Scorecard
Taken from Oxfam's "Behind the Brands" Report

China and the Primal Episteme

The ancient possibility of knowledge that China possesses is well placed to resonate effectively with the Primal episteme. This is because it incorporates a knowledge of mankind alongside that of other things.

The ancient possibility of knowledge that China possesses is best appreciated in contrast to the dominant possibility of knowledge in the Modern Western world. One of the key defining features of the Modern Western world is the Modern episteme as defined by Michel Foucault. Within the Modern episteme the role of “epistemological man” is central and definitive (Foucault 1970; Birkin & Polesie 2011). Briefly the significance of “epistemological man” means that knowledge in the Modern Human sciences is a knowledge that has been created

of man, by man and for man.

This means that knowledge in the Modern Human Sciences is made possible by reflexive self-referencing; a kind of species-solipsism. This helps to explain how Modern progress has benefit man at the expense of the natural world. It has done so because knowledge in the Modern human sciences did not recognise a natural world as may be proven by a quick examination of any standard Modern text explaining how mankind is to be organised to increase its own wealth; i.e. economics, accounting and management where  nature per se does not exist. This is a key driver of unsustainable development.

So how does ancient China differ? It differs in many ways that for the moment we can represent simply by Tian Xia which may be translated as “All under Heaven”. The concept of Tian Xia is closely associated with civilization and order in classical Chinese philosophy, and it has formed the basis for the world view of the Chinese people and nations influenced by them since at least the first millennium BC. A first point to notice is the age of this concept - the first millennium BC - which is indicative of its intrinsic sustainability. (In contrast the Modern episteme in the West lasted a mere 200 years old before it undermined its own existence with unsustainable forms of development.)

We should be aware that Tian Xia in its application and development in China was not of course all good. It did for example underpin the idea that the Chinese emperor acted with a Mandate from Heaven and as such was effectively the centre of the world and all powerful.

However, the significance of Tian Xia for present purposes is that it was not based on a possibility of knowledge that referred its own origins back to itself as in the Modern episteme’s knowledge of man, by man and for man. Tian Xia embraced – as it says – “All under Heaven”.

Tian Xia or "All under Heaven"

Eric Fromm: Primal Psychologist

The emerging Primal episteme (Birkin & Polesie 2011) is based upon a new possibility of knowledge (Foucault 1970).  Science now provides a view of the origins of the world and of ourselves that simply was not available when the Modern episteme or age was established. The transition from Modern to Primal can be summarised as going from 

• abstract knowledge belief systems in Modern human sciences produced by and for mankind (which provides an epistemological or knowledge foundation); to
• trust in the findings of empirically-grounded science that so accurately and thoroughly describes and explains our world and ourselves (which provides an ontological or “being” foundation).

This kind of epistemic transition is not “forced” upon a recalcitrant mankind that has to obey its new sets of rules.  It is rather an opportunity for new ways of thinking about ourselves and the world that are created by pioneers who adopt the new episteme. They have adopted new epistemes in the past usually without using any kind of epistemic analysis knowledge or methods. They simply flourished and enthusiastically used the fresh insights that the "new episteme" provided in their own areas of knowledge to carve out a different kind of world, a whole new world.

Getting over Financial & Economic Crises

The Financial Crises of 2007/08 is judged by many economists to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. As a result of the 2008 crisis, significant financial institutions, notably banks and stock markets, lost trillions of $US. In turn housing markets lost value resulting in evictions, foreclosures and unemployment. People saw their savings, pensions and endowments loose overnight the kind of money that takes decades of hard work to save. We are still suffering from this crises as more key business suffer or fail, high street shops and house-hold names go out of business; and  the European sovereign-debt crisis has ruined countless lives  in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and now Cyprus.

The 2008 crisis took much of the Financial & Economic world by surprise in spite of global studies and close attention from all quarters. The causes of the crisis are difficult to identify and has given rise to extensive debate. It is a global crisis and all of us are involved. The search goes on for ways to stop it happening again.

A significant amount of blame for the crisis has to be the “financialization” of the economy:

Transition to Sustainable Business

PR identifies how the world is changing. The most fundamental change that PR identifies is one that lies at the foundation of our knowledge. This fundamental change determines how knowledge is made possible. This is in essence a very simple kind of change – BUT it is difficult to perceive and accept that so much can change as a result of so little!

Intrinsic Sustainable Development (ISD) (2011) is grounded in a change of “what makes knowledge possible”.  To explain this kind of change, ISD relies on the work of Michel Foucault (1970) who called the “possibility of knowledge” an EPISTEME.  Foucault described only three different epistemes in European history from Renaissance times to Classical and then the Modern. Foucault died in 1984 before any evidence of an emerging episteme to replace the Modern was available.

In ISD, an emerging episteme is identified and called “Primal”.  On a technical level, the change from the Modern to the Primal episteme is equivalent to going from abstract belief systems to empirically grounded science (or to be even more technical from an epistemology to an ontology). On a day to day level, this means that we shift from living according to overarching societal beliefs (in notably economics and free markets) to becoming part of the living world once more.

Such changes will have a huge impact on business. John Elkington (2013, p. 62) observes: “We need to redesign our, economies, politics and culture.” Elkington gave the world the “Triple Bottom Line” approach so that businesses would acknowledge their dependence upon achieving good social and environmental performances as well as economic. But in his review of “Corporation 2020: Transforming Business for Tomorrow’s World” (Sukhdev 2012), Elkington admits his approach has been wrong.

Elkington’s approach had been to tweak corporations, change their performance at the margins to improve social and environmental conditions without a change in business core values and activities.  But Elkington now sees this as the wrong approach and he writes “The challenge is now ecological, in a broader sense: we must reshape the context within which both the corporations and the investors operate…” (Elkington 2013, p. 62).

Reading “Corporation 2020: Transforming Business for Tomorrow’s World” (Sukhdev 2012) changed Elkington’s mind. Corporations 20:20 argues that we must as a matter of some urgency shift from a 1920’s corporate model of “free-market-capitalists” and “cost-externalising” to a 2020 corporate model with the following mission: 

            Corporation 20:20 MISSION

1. The purpose of the corporation is to harness private interests to serve the public interest.

2. Corporations shall accrue fair returns for shareholders, but not at the expense of the legitimate interests of other stakeholders.

3. Corporations shall operate sustainably, meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

4. Corporations shall distribute their wealth equitably among those who contribute to its creation.

5. Corporations shall be governed in a manner that is participatory, transparent, ethical, and accountable.

6. Corporations shall not infringe on the right of natural persons to govern themselves, nor infringe on other universal human rights.

For more about Corporation 20:20 visit their website here.

The Transition of Industry

Is Sustainability still Possible?

You could be forgiven if you thought that the world was moving towards sustainable development. There is so much going on to improve our relations with nature and society. But if you look closely this is not the case. We are still heading towards a future of disasters large and small.

The World Watch Institute in Washington DC looks closely at sustainable development. In their State of the World 2012 report they write: “Despite multiplying numbers of solemn declarations, plans, and goals, no nation is even close to evolving toward a sustainable economy.” (Renner 2012, p. 3).

There are many reasons for this inability to realise sustainable development. The first may be that the required changes are so significant and the problems so intractable that much time is needed for changes to take place. We do not have the luxury of time!!