Uploaded October 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
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Filming and Editing by Christopher Cuthrell
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Transcript:
We live in this sort of structure of never ending growth and consumption and production and that it's always better to produce more to consume more. Even if, you know, like me, you come from a rich country, you will see the extent to which economics sort of now infiltrates every area of your life. So whether it's, you know, your family life and your ability to spend time with your children, whether it's your access to health or social services. You know, you can see the impact of global corporations on politics at an international level, at a national level. It's not only, you know, killing all species, which it is, but it's also just an exhausting way to live, and one that takes us away from what matters most.
I don't see how we can resolve any of those issues while we have an economic system that depends on an unsustainable level of growth and that is driven by this ideology of scarcity and competition. I'm doing. a Ph.D. on economic thought and mysticism. So I'm looking at how mysticism can contribute to alternative ways of imagining our economy the way we live economically.
My name is Alicia Mendonca-Richards. I'm from Welwyn Garden City Quaker Meeting, which is in Hertfordshire, just outside London in the UK. So whenever there are these attempts to try and think about alternative ways to live or to sort of create an economic system that is less destructive and more just, there's very often this response that that's impossible. That any changes that would make our way of life more sustainable and more caring and more equal would cause the international economic order to collapse. And that's just not true.
We feel it. We feel it in our hearts. We feel it in our bones. We feel the sadness of the way that we are living and the destruction that we are causing. And we know that this can't be the best way to live. We can look at the earth around us and we can look at how nature sustain itself and we can see that a system of, never ending growth on a limited planet, a system that doesn't allow for reciprocity and, you know, a sustainable way of life just can't be the best way to live. But we can also see it because, you know, human Beings have for millennia lived in different types of social structures and they haven't always organized in a capitalist system; and we are here!
Since the beginning of the 20th century, economics has model itself after the physical sciences. The classical economist that when we think of people like Adam Smith and Marx and Ricardo, these are people who were asking very theoretical and philosophical questions about what does it mean to live a good life and how does the distribution of resources contribute to that. Just like in political theory, we asked questions about, you know, how should we shape how, how should we govern ourselves. We expect that there is no perfect answer and there is no objective answer. These are theoretical questions that we ask, and they have a lot of normative assumptions in them, and we have to make subjective judgments. It's the same in economics.
What happened at the turn of the 20th century was, because Newtonian physics had become so successful in allowing us to industrialize and innovate and it's seen as such an authoritative discipline, what economists wanted to do was to model themselves after the most credible discipline of their time. They deliberately moved away from the social sciences, from political philosophy, and decided they wanted to become more mathematical, more scientific.
The problem with trying to economic questions into these sort of classical physics models is that human beings are very complex and relational people who live in a contextual environment. We’re not predictable. We don't always do the same thing. And so in order for economists to sort of model economics after science, a physical science. It had to really simplify a lot of the very complex theoretical discussions they were having about how human beings organize and share resources. The consumer that they use in these models is a hyper rational and self interested person who's always going to make every decision for economic gain.
Economics has never been able to use scientific models to predict things as successfully as science has. So that's why we keep having financial crashes. We can't really resolve unemployment....
___
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
QuakerSpeak is a weekly video series. New video every other THURSDAY!
SUPPORT QuakerSpeak! quakerspeak.com/donate
SUBSCRIBE for a new video every other week! http://fdsj.nl/QS-Subscribe
WATCH all our videos: http://fdsj.nl/qs-all-videos
___
Become a Friends Journal subscriber for only $28
http://fdsj.nl/FJ-Subscribe
Filming and Editing by Christopher Cuthrell
___
Transcript:
We live in this sort of structure of never ending growth and consumption and production and that it's always better to produce more to consume more. Even if, you know, like me, you come from a rich country, you will see the extent to which economics sort of now infiltrates every area of your life. So whether it's, you know, your family life and your ability to spend time with your children, whether it's your access to health or social services. You know, you can see the impact of global corporations on politics at an international level, at a national level. It's not only, you know, killing all species, which it is, but it's also just an exhausting way to live, and one that takes us away from what matters most.
I don't see how we can resolve any of those issues while we have an economic system that depends on an unsustainable level of growth and that is driven by this ideology of scarcity and competition. I'm doing. a Ph.D. on economic thought and mysticism. So I'm looking at how mysticism can contribute to alternative ways of imagining our economy the way we live economically.
My name is Alicia Mendonca-Richards. I'm from Welwyn Garden City Quaker Meeting, which is in Hertfordshire, just outside London in the UK. So whenever there are these attempts to try and think about alternative ways to live or to sort of create an economic system that is less destructive and more just, there's very often this response that that's impossible. That any changes that would make our way of life more sustainable and more caring and more equal would cause the international economic order to collapse. And that's just not true.
We feel it. We feel it in our hearts. We feel it in our bones. We feel the sadness of the way that we are living and the destruction that we are causing. And we know that this can't be the best way to live. We can look at the earth around us and we can look at how nature sustain itself and we can see that a system of, never ending growth on a limited planet, a system that doesn't allow for reciprocity and, you know, a sustainable way of life just can't be the best way to live. But we can also see it because, you know, human Beings have for millennia lived in different types of social structures and they haven't always organized in a capitalist system; and we are here!
Since the beginning of the 20th century, economics has model itself after the physical sciences. The classical economist that when we think of people like Adam Smith and Marx and Ricardo, these are people who were asking very theoretical and philosophical questions about what does it mean to live a good life and how does the distribution of resources contribute to that. Just like in political theory, we asked questions about, you know, how should we shape how, how should we govern ourselves. We expect that there is no perfect answer and there is no objective answer. These are theoretical questions that we ask, and they have a lot of normative assumptions in them, and we have to make subjective judgments. It's the same in economics.
What happened at the turn of the 20th century was, because Newtonian physics had become so successful in allowing us to industrialize and innovate and it's seen as such an authoritative discipline, what economists wanted to do was to model themselves after the most credible discipline of their time. They deliberately moved away from the social sciences, from political philosophy, and decided they wanted to become more mathematical, more scientific.
The problem with trying to economic questions into these sort of classical physics models is that human beings are very complex and relational people who live in a contextual environment. We’re not predictable. We don't always do the same thing. And so in order for economists to sort of model economics after science, a physical science. It had to really simplify a lot of the very complex theoretical discussions they were having about how human beings organize and share resources. The consumer that they use in these models is a hyper rational and self interested person who's always going to make every decision for economic gain.
Economics has never been able to use scientific models to predict things as successfully as science has. So that's why we keep having financial crashes. We can't really resolve unemployment....
___
The views expressed in this video are of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Friends Journal or its collaborators.
