Author: CRT Admin

I wanted to provide you with a set of essays titled “Grasping and Reducing Poverty in Minnesota” that the Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism (CRT) and three other Minnesota-based, local think tanks recently released.

From my point of view, the important fact about these essays is the demonstration that collaboration and constructive discourse is both still possible in America and effective.

When one steps back from the infantilism of our current politics and the limited intellectual resources brought to bear on our challenges, the thought easily emerges that maturity of judgment implies ethics and ethics demands consideration of others.

Our powers, to be used ethically, must be under self-restraint and certainly never egregiously dismissive of others.

Thus, our project to engage with the Center of the American Experiment, Growth & Justice and the Citizens League is ethics in action.

We hope this precedent in collaboration can be a model for politics in Minnesota going forward.

I have just given a paper at a conference in Bangkok cosponsored with the World Fellowship of Buddhists and the World Buddhist University.

My paper attempted to apply some early teachings of the Buddha as best practices in this world for individual moral self-government and then, progressively, governance of communities and institutions, including nation states and multinational organizations.

I was given a copy of an old lecture by a famous Thai Buddhist monk, Buddhadasa Bhikkhu. On Nirvana, which I had largely understood as the ultimate goal of Buddhist thought and practice coming at the end of our possible reincarnations as a sort of heavenly existence.

To a different way of thinking, Buddhadasa Bhikkhu reminds us that the root meaning of “Nirvana” is only “coolness.” In other words, we can achieve “coolness” of mind, heart and personality in this life before any rebirth into a new incarnation. The word most simply understood indicates the cooling of the fires of upset and distraction, the feelings, anxieties, desires, passions, motivations and thoughts which unsettle us and give us unease instead of ease in this life.

I find this an important reminder that there are ways of living which are under our control in this temporal span between birth and death and in this physical space subject to what we know as natural laws of causation and which can prepare us for service of ends larger than our own ego-centricities.

In the sense of achieving “coolness” of heart, mind and spirit, Buddhism might take on new constructive importance for all of us no matter our traditions and our ambitions.

As I was flying over the Pacific to attend a conference in Bangkok on sustainability and the first teachings of the Buddha, I read St. Theresa of Avila’s story of her life.

The book was sent to me by my cousin Lynn in Taos, New Mexico, who makes painted retablos of saints as her vocation.

On where we can find the moral insight and courage to stand against the dark sides of life and capitalism, St. Theresa advised that we should not let the “mirror of our soul” become so clouded that we cannot see the good that is there.

This practice “teaches [us] that the Lord resides very deep inside [our] souls. This notion is much more attractive and fruitful than the idea that God is outside us.”

“Absolutely, the best place to look for God is inside ourselves. We don’t need to ascend to Heaven or reach any further than our own beings. Trying to go beyond our own center only wears the soul out and distracts her. Such efforts do not bear fruit.”

This insight that a vision of the good is already inside us, somewhere, resonates with Buddhism and Chinese Taoism and with Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic. It is an insight which leads to the conclusion that a moral capitalism is possible.

Since the dawn of the industrial age, critics of its reliance on capitalism for continuous innovation and growth have pointed accusing fingers at systemic aspects of private property, free markets and limited government regulation for capitalism’s many unequal outcomes and power imbalances.

But what if the root cause of the shortcomings of capitalism are not in its architecture but in the minds and hearts of those who make use of its structure for their own purposes?

Recently, I read an essay on Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Two insights from that first Western historian would incline us not to blame systems but rather look for causes and offsetting remedies elsewhere.

Thucydides thought that “…the usual thing among men is that when they want something, they will, without any reflection, leave that to hope, while they will employ the full force of reason in rejecting what they find unpalatable.”

Markets generate wants, as honey draws flies. Is it any surprise, then, that people in markets cling to hope when they should not and rationalize away what is inconvenient or unsettling in their transactions, especially any personal responsibility for doing good to others?

Thucydides also said: “War is a stern teacher … it brings most peoples’ minds down to the level of their actual circumstances.” War throws “the ordinary conditions of civilized life into confusion; human nature, always ready to offend even where laws exist, show[s] itself proudly as something incapable of controlling true passions, insubordinate to the idea of justice, the enemy of anything superior to itself.”

Many have pointed out the supposed similarities between war and markets: dog eat dog competition; to the victor belong the spoils; survival of the fittest; no empathy for losers. So markets, like war, expose the rawness of human nature, bloody red in tooth and claw.

There is something to the comparison. People do not lose their human natures when they go to market. So when market realities – no free lunch, prices too low or too high – bring them down to actual circumstances and sow confusion in their framing of expectations and aspirations, their passions take over and become insubordinate to justice. They consider their own interests paramount and not subordinate to the concerns of others.

So in a sense, it is a system that creates our disappointments, a natural system, if you will. But the market system of our own devising for production, finance and consumption, at times, brings forward human nature in the raw – untrammeled, unpolished, un-burdened by virtuous sentiments, unadorned by beauty.

The solution: reform the market system or change our natures?

The Interim Australian Royal Commission report on abuse of marketing by financial firms was released last month. The executive summary of the report can be found here.

The techniques for enhancing firm revenues brought under scrutiny do not measure up to standards of moral capitalism. Once again. I s such taking advantages of customers inescapable in capitalism as a function of a human nature which is programmed to deviate towards selfishness or can market incentives be arranged to offset that propensity with more ethical fidelity?

Noel Purcell, Chairman emeritus of the Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism who worked on CSR for WestPac Bank in Sydney, has submitted a response to the Royal Commission’s interim report, which can be found here.

In Noel’s distinctive and distinguished fashion, his response is short and forceful. I urge you to read it and let me know your thoughts.