By Joseph Tenzin Oliver
Introduction
THERE IS A new generation redefining the values of the one that preceded it. They are seeking to challenge and renew the existing paradigm with a force never seen before in history.
“We will either find a way or make one.”
– Hannibal, 217 CE
These times are interesting and totally unprecedented. We are living in a period of immense upheaval, for society and humanity, and this is due mainly to three reasons.
One – we have entered a period of incredible innovation and rapid technological development. We have access to a broad range of knowledge, often for free, from all corners of the globe (if you are lucky enough to have a computer or smartphone). The traditional role of the corporation or institution is being challenged and confronted, labeled even, as an outdated form of manipulation and control.
A plethora of fresh start-ups and the digital nomadic lifestyle have now arisen as viable economic options to support one’s life and income. This has enabled an entire generation to dream of potential – to refine what is important to them, of deepest value, and to view the planet as an intrinsically interconnected system. Our technological advancement has the power to disrupt nearly all known industries, creating new and unfamiliar worlds, markets and opportunities. We have the advent of consumer artificial intelligence and machine learning, robotics and nanotechnology, simulated experiences and virtual worlds. It is the era of mindfulness and meditation technologies, bio hacking and transhumanism, the connection between the material and immaterial, flesh, machine and spirit combined. Technology has the potential to become fully integrated into, or even take over, the human race itself, in what is being called The Singularity.
The timeline for this is already within the lifetime of the current generation, with computing intelligence expected to match and then exceed the combined calculation power of all human minds by around 2040.
Two – and this is partly because of our technological advancement – we are now not only a globally-minded generation, but also one that has gained access to extensive scientific knowledge and collective global discourse to discover that we are facing the most serious challenges humanity has ever faced, such as: climate change, resource depletion, overconsumption, population growth and environmental degradation. The overriding feeling is that these problems have been caused by previous generations due to them being blind-sided by capitalist economic practices that pursue money as the sole overriding value, with the pursuit of ego enhancement and the cult of the celebrity driving the desire for mass consumption, instead of honoring the aspects of life that bring deeper meaning and satisfaction.
It is worth looking at these two factors as complete disruptors. I define a complete disruptor as a force within society that will affect and transform every aspect of human existence. When you consider the consequences of the two forces combined, we are looking at an entirely new experience of what it means to be human – in relation to each other, and our planet.
These factors will also bring complete change to our current model of civilization, and in particular this will be reflected in changes within the economic system of free market economics that has been accepted as habitually normal.
Three – the final aspect of this upheaval is a shift in the values of this generation. We are no longer interested in blindly accepting the media or shopping for the sake of therapy, and we don’t want to pollute the seas with mass-produced plastic items that we will use once and then throw away. We are not going to accept that nothing can be done or that this is the only path. Our generation can see a new horizon, one that fulfills the deep need for purpose within us and requires a new definition of values.
This generation passionately wants the world to cherish shared humanity and to protect nature around us. The moral values of this generation find the extinction of a species repugnant, acts of war a sickness, and extreme poverty a desperate sign that we are not fulfilling our duty of care on this earth.
The previous systems that were set up are going to come crashing down, and we are not even the ones who broke the systems – they are already broken. We are the ones who are going to replace these broken systems with ones that work, not because we are more ethical, but because if we don’t, we will suffer a catastrophic loss of quality of life and witness the breakdown of society around us.
Why does this matter to your investments? Because the shift of consciousness that is happening is an opportunity to make wise and calculated investing decisions based upon the knowledge that the current model is not just failing but will be totally disrupted. It is also the opportunity to integrate purposeful meaning and personal values into your work. The perfect storm has arrived, whereby this generation will necessarily develop integrated internal and external values combined with holistic thinking into their career and investment decisions. This choice of path is being shaped as your read this. It’s called conscious investing.
Suffering and disconnection
People are the architects of their own suffering. And this is often due to a deep feeling of disconnection and isolation when trying to find meaning in the world. This disconnection forgets the meaningful questions of why are we here and what is our contribution, replacing them with short-term gratifications that lead to depression and further disconnect.
A shocking example of this is the tragic fact that suicide is the largest killer of young men in Western society. People are fundamentally disconnected from themselves, relying on material distractions or prescription drugs to nurse the pain they feel, and numb the need for meaning altogether. Disconnection breeds depression and exacerbates the lack of care and kindness that we fundamentally need to have for ourselves and by extension those around us. The self-forgiving words we should be hearing in our minds are often overshadowed with voices that speak of judgment, fear, violence and criticism.
As far as we know, humans are the only known creatures who can deliberately create negative emotions. We often do this many times throughout the day, creating a negative image of ourselves through comparison with others, expecting life to be different, and fostering regrets based upon how we could or should have acted differently. These factors combine to detrimentally affect our self-esteem, and furthermore our perception of the life we lead, the work we do, and why we are even here in the first place. This can cause us to detach and stop caring about the work we do, and how we nurture and support others.
We have become programmed to lack empathy, to lack kindness, and to fear those who are different from us. We have been taught to forget our shared humanity, and in doing so we have lost our compassion for others. And this is a complete illusion. As science has shown us, we are connected with everyone and everything around us, and it is only our perception of ourselves (our egos) that cause us to think we are separated from the web of life. The ‘I am’ is nothing more than a psychological construct that creates separation. This is perhaps the largest and most prevalent mental health problem on the planet. It is a collective insanity that is mostly being ignored.
Disconnection can also be understood as suffering. There are three reasons for this: firstly, it’s how we react to something emotionally. Perhaps you experience a negative situation which detracts from your happiness or quality of life. This is then perceived as a negative situation – one that you don’t want – and that very resistance to the situation can then cause you distress.
Then there is a second reason: if we are too far out of our comfort zone, the terror that can accompany the feeling of being overwhelmed and out of control can create immense distress. We can train and develop, but often the prevention of this is something that takes repeated exposure and resilience to challenge the perceived parameters of our comfort zone.
Finally, it is our regret that we did not handle a situation correctly that can give us pain. This is also understood as guilt, or perhaps it is blame that we are projecting onto ourselves or someone else. This regret can continue to cause us distress long after the situation took place.
Most importantly, we are not treating ourselves well in the way we should. Instead of devastating ourselves with words of sabotage or negative self-image – “you’re not successful enough”, “you’re not pretty enough” – we need to develop self-compassion. We need to look in the mirror and find beauty in our imperfections and reflect back with mercy and forgiveness for ourselves.
If you take a close look at how we treat ourselves, you will notice that this is exactly how we are treating the world around us, and how we have set up a punishing and devastating economic system.
The failed economic system
“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”
– Anon
It’s important to understand what is not working and why. The current economic system creates problems – it is based on an unsustainable model that requires continuous growth in a finite environment. The model is not suited to our finite planet and a species that relies upon the Earth for its survival. It has led to a systemic breakdown of our vital life support ecosystems.
The ideology which defends the autonomy of market growth, unsustainable debt servicing and financial speculation without restriction should be considered the piracy of our times. Piracy sanctioned by government bodies that should in fact be acting in the benefit of all civilians under their jurisdiction.
Why should governments regulate us? Well, when freedom becomes amoral or impossible it’s time to rein in its extremes. An example of immoral freedom would be freedom to profit at the cost or expense of collapsing biodiversity. Another example would be to profit during the life of a single generation at the expense of future generations’ prosperity. So we must not think of success and happiness as a decoupling of limitations but more as qualities that come with and require inherent responsibility.
It is proven that the current economic model is stratifying populations, and year-on-year the Gini coefficient shows that the world’s inequality is getting worse and the gap between the have-a-lots and have-nothings is getting wider. The model has created a new set of rules for inequality, that of extreme polarization between the rich and the poor. It’s become so bad that just eight people on this planet own half the world’s wealth.81
This is not a case of a global north and south divide. Wealthy countries are not protected from the negative effects because it has been found that in societies where the high growth of income is not distributed amongst the population, drug abuse, imprisonment and teenage births are exacerbated. The system of money is destroying both the planet and the societal resilience structures that are so very necessary for a well-functioning and civil society.
So how do we change this? What about an economy for the other 99% of the planet? Let’s identify the fact that as an investor or asset owner you are most likely to be in the top 5% of the wealth in the world. Often your role is to bridge the divide between a resource and the opportunity it has to create value for you or your clients. So as a person in the top 5%, do you have a duty in your work to protect the interests of the other 95%, and are those interests best served through making as much profit as you can for yourself or your clients?
Earth is at its limits to provide for the human species. This is because we have created our civilizations in an extremely inefficient way, that do not renew the planet we are dependent on and instead creates a degradation of the ecosystem that our economy relies on to survive. In essence, we have dug into, extracted, and started using the foundations of the building we live in to build another floor on top. The core reason for this is that externalities have not been included in our economic decisions and models.
In particular, I will now focus on externalities, since they create global ramifications and implications that are not measured within the investment. So far investors have been able to get away without having to include these in their calculations, subsequently presenting the choice as a sound investment. But nothing could be further from the actual truth and natural law that we are all subject to.
You need to take a systematic approach to your decision making, and include the factors that affect the economy beyond the traditional economic and financial models and include the systematically ignored or dismissed externalities into your considerations. One of the most important externalities to include is that of throughput. Throughput is a measurement of the amount of resources that pass through the economic process and can indicate the timeline for depletion for a commodity, for instance, the horizon for copper as a finite resource on this planet. It also highlights the limited regenerative capacity of the planet to produce more of the same commodity, and thus is a key indicator that can tell us how imbalanced our system is in relation to the planet’s ability to continue sustaining our needs.
In your investment, would you include the measurement of throughput and metabolic flow of useful matter and energy from environmental sources used by the economy versus the annual marketed flow of goods and services? What about including indicators of consumption and waste? How do you know if environmental sinks are able to handle and absorb the amount of waste that is being created? Most investors and their investment choices totally ignore throughput. Yet it is totally relevant as its magnitude directly correlates with how the metabolic flow relates to the natural cycles that replenish and regenerate the depletion of an economy’s resources and absorb the waste created.
If we cannot include throughput into our models and choices, we will literally eat the planet from under us. How big will our appetites get before the economy, GDP and unrelenting capitalism consume us, destroying the planet and the very systems that attract investment? Currently, on a global basis, it seems that this is one big experiment. And yet the irony is striking – we have developed and are most reliant on a system that is totally unsustainable for our needs.
The question that needs to be asked is what are you investing in that is reliant on unmeasured and unbalanced throughput?
We all need to contribute towards developing, supporting and practicing a new economic system that allows humans to prosper, live in balance with our planet, and allows us to reduce suffering across the globe. One that includes the spiritual, emotional and physical needs of all of us. One that balances our needs on this planet with those of the Earth’s regenerative capacity and the other species that join us on the planet’s delicate dance around the sun.
Redefining value
“All of the perplexities, confusion, and distress in America arises ... from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.”
– John Adams (1787), Founding Father of the American Constitution
As Aristotle said, “money exists not by nature but by law”. As with all technologies and many laws, we find that they have become outdated, needing to be upgraded or abandoned as obsolete, no longer meeting contemporary needs and nuances. Then it becomes apparent that they need to be radically reviewed.
Money has gone through many developments throughout history, and is now entering into a new era that will redefine its value, its purpose, and how it contributes to our overall satisfaction and health on this planet. Although traditional investing principles and the intrinsic culture of the financial industry have deliberately ignored a lot of important factors, the industry needs to be challenged, and thus transformed, to be fit for purpose.
Money is defined by Bernard Lietaer as “an agreement within a community to use something as a medium of exchange,”82 but it is time to revisit this agreement. Why have we increased steadily in relative wealth since the 1950s, but plateaued in happiness and satisfaction? It seems as though economic growth hasn’t brought all the desired benefits of prosperity, and we have reduced our communities and our humanity into a transactional culture. This has happened because we made choices with money that came from an unconscious perspective, one of short-term gains. We have made decisions about the use of money that dilute our personal and inherent value to that of an item to exchange.
Philosopher Charles Eisenstein refers to a process called “the monetization of everything”. This is described as the growth of an economy because of technological advancements which can create completely new markets and the monetization of things in nature, things that are invaluable to our lives: air, water, forests, our oceans, and our soil.
To value nature as monetized capital is to miss the point. If you want to put a dollar value on a tree, on an ecosystem, a mountain range, etc., and develop a market for ecosystem services, e.g. the amount of clean air that a tree can produce, then this will continue to lead towards the concept of offsetting, similar to traditional corporate social responsibility (CSR). This can be thought of as a ‘fig leaf’ gesture, covering up the guilt and original sin of the companies’ negative impacts. Obviously, this approach is favored by investors as it puts nature into a marketplace that can be bought, sold and hopefully increase in value.
Unfortunately for all of us the viewpoint that this creates within the human mind is so deeply destructive. It reduces the total uniqueness and value of something to its monetary unit price, and thus that unique item can be exchanged for something else that may not be unique at all. This causes extreme issues in society, putting a price on a person or an ecosystem, or anything that is living and has irreplaceable value. It can also cause problems when money in itself becomes the objective of a person, corporation or a society, in that it will override the extremely valuable and necessary components of life that cannot necessarily be measured. There was a famous example of this in the speech that Robert F. Kennedy made when he spoke about the things that make life worthwhile, all of which were not included in the annual reports and calculations of gross national product. In his speech, made over 40 years ago, along with many other tireless observers, he maintains that the current way we measure success is in fact at a detriment to our society.
The sociologist Georg Simmel instead views money as a component of life that helped us understand the totality of life. In essence, he said that money is a process, not a thing.83 Coming from his theory of Methodological Relationism, the principle of which is that everything interacts in some way with everything else, it is worth considering that money is in fact required by its very existence to reinvent and transform itself accordingly to the circumstances that operate within. Taking this viewpoint, we find that the use of money will have to start to address, transform and support the new needs of a diminished planet and unequal society. This transformation will come from those that can see the limitations to growth within our society and also adopt a conscious investing mindset.
In a wonderful twist of fate and perspective, we are the architects of our own demise and thus by recognizing and accepting this, we can also be the saviors. It will require redrawing the boundaries, describing new stories, and inventing new practices for money, which will change the humanity for the better. But to change the world, we must first start with ourselves.
Change comes from within
“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
The starting place for this whole transformation of the planet and human consciousness can and must be within yourself. Taking the time to breathe, to reflect within, to listen to yourself, to the observer behind all the noise and to-do lists of the day, to be grounded in your body and to recognize your normal and natural state of mind. Reside in your subtle energies and allow yourself to realize that this is where your wisdom comes from.
By re-establishing the disrupted connections with yourself you can begin to transform your reality of life. By transforming your perspective on life you will be part of the solution instead of the problem.
When you establish your connection to yourself your deepest intentions will become clear to you. They will guide you towards what you want. Intention starts from within, it is not an external factor. How you treat yourself, how you impart meaning into your work and the choices you live by are a direct reflection of how you view the world. This can be unconscious or made conscious.
It is your perspective on a situation that determines the intrinsic value and whether it’s a positive or negative situation. If your intention is to master your life and to not be bound by your reactions, if your conscious action is to imbue positive intention into your life’s aims and your daily work and relationships, then the outcome will be high self-esteem and well-being for yourself and those around you.
Well-being is best realized by practicing mindfulness and compassion, also known as the practice of loving kindness. Firstly, you must practice loving kindness for yourself – we all make mistakes. If you can be kind to yourself in the situations where you feel stressed, low on energy, or where it feels like the world is against you, then this can transform your inner world and this will extend to your outer world. Personal compassion is one of the most fundamentally important aspects of well-being and it influences the feelings, behaviors, and emotions that contribute towards personal happiness. This is the remedy to the disconnection our society embodies so deeply.
So how is it done? Firstly, you need to think about how you would treat your best friend, your family or the person you most respect and how you would extend compassion to them. The empathy and love of compassion towards them will highlight how you would reduce their suffering in a situation. What would you do to make them feel more at ease, to reduce any unhappiness they had, or to support them through your kindness, through caring about them? Can you react to their situation with deep heartfelt love? Can you remove your judgment of their situation, can you avoid treading on their feelings, their beliefs? Would you keep a warm compassionate presence and retain a positive attitude towards them, even if they caused the situation themselves? Even if it’s a small factor blown out of proportion in your mind, can you hold their feelings to be true and want to help to make them feel better through your voice, actions and thought? If you can do this for someone else, then you really can and should do it for yourself.
The process of positively changing yourself and your perspective is an ongoing life journey. It is the awakening of that which is important to you and that nourishes and supports your higher meaning on this planet. Your ability to contribute positively to addressing the global issues is directly correlated to your ability to provide loving kindness for yourself. Once you have started this practice, and discovered your intrinsic positive intentions, then you can start to integrate them into your work.
Align your personal values with your work
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
– Viktor Frankl
The management of money is part of life. By including personal values, including what we chose to purchase and what job we take, we can reflect the same intention. Often the roads we take to discovering our personal values come from hacking our way through the jungle of our own perceptions to find our truth. This individual reflection doesn’t come with a ready cut path, it needs a machete. You have to create the path, discover and invent the opportunities, and in some cases develop new ways in which you must measure the results. The path will be personal and unique to you.
To determine your own deep driving forces, try to ask yourself these questions:
1. How will the world be a better place because I have lived?
2. What would I like to be said about me and my work after I am gone?
3. Can I look into the eyes of my children and say my job is 100% ethical in all of its actions? If not, what would it take to achieve that?
4. What do I need to change about myself or my work to inspire others to be kinder people?
5. What is my quest?
By changing your perspective on your approach to work and moving from passive to an active integration of your values allows you to reach mastery of your role on this planet. It will enable you to create a positive influence on the world around you and to reconnect you with your heart. The consequence will be the dissolution of negative and self-defeating habits that have been collected over the years. It will empower you, and you will identify yourself as a force for good in this world. The integration of morality, ethics, and values into business is the ability to hold true to a greater meaning than oneself. It is to stop being selfish, and this world so needs less selfishness!
Taking action
Invest in stock and companies that have strong sustainability policies. It’s been found that eco-stock performs extremely well against other companies, and this is partly due to robust ecological policies that mitigate risk of both known and unknown hazards. This will also protect the investor from the current externalities that we all know exist but which haven’t been factored into most current business models.
In the coming years, all businesses will need to be sustainable. Investment into sustainable alternatives will allow you to benefit from the coming transformation of the economy and also to get the edge on those who are too timid to put their choices where their values are. To put it simply, investing in sustainable and disruptive technology industries is the world’s largest opportunity. It is the future.
The role of the entrepreneur as visionary is critical, and so is the role of investor as the champion of this vision. Through the continuing cycle and investment, creative destruction is possible, and we need creative and ethical destruction to transform the current status quo. The link between entrepreneurs and investors is a symbiotic relationship, a form of quantum entanglement between two people. It is these two mindsets which will create the ideas that will disrupt and invent a new future. As an investor, you need to seek out, find and support disruptive entrepreneurs or become one yourself.
In order to develop strategic investment criteria and a set of guidelines that cover enhanced prosperity, deeper meaning, and also contain risk mitigation for your portfolio, you must think in these terms and adopt investments that:
· Are not based on finite resources; wind and solar instead of fossil fuels, for instance. We need to look beyond peak resource, to the point that they will be exhausted. This also includes active disinvestment for any current portfolios.
· Take into account the capacity of the planet’s climate sinks to assimilate the environmental impacts of our economy. To strengthen, not destroy, the regenerative capacity of our ecosystem.
· Include community resilience. Because when people are faced with a recession they will stop spending, and lose the ability to pay back debt.
· Don’t sensationalize material pleasures and their worth. The items we need in life must be designed in a cradle-to-grave way, taking into account the materials required.
· Will not destroy the quality of our air, soil, water, oceans, atmosphere and reduce the diversity of the planet’s species.
· Protect ecosystems without human intervention and others that include ecological enhancement, such as reversing desertification.
In addition, this can also lead to a rethinking of the principle of owning assets and the distribution of surpluses that may come from them.
On a practical market level, these would be good industries to invest in:
Clean energy vehicles, renewable energy, recycling, conservation, food defense and other environmental protection, community housing and neighborhoods that increase quality of life, smart grids and IT infrastructure, transformational education, non-meat alternatives, oceanic seaweed farming, shared economy and community assets, sustainable agricultural practices and hydroponics.
These guidelines challenge the axiom of unconsidered growth and make us ask questions about the investments we should be looking for, for instance do they have robust sustainability policies, what is their growth strategy, how big can it get and how big should it be?
Imagine the world where carbon reduction technology research produced limitless energy for the everyday person, or a car that runs on water. Where we are faced with drastic methods for resource efficiency – for instance, mining urine and human waste for precious metals. Or where, due to a need for resource substitution, mycelium is developed as an alternative to plastic packaging. All of these examples are already happening. The future is now, and it needs to be supported by those who have enough personal insight and social foresight to protect the planet and the people that inhabit it.
To ignore the responsibility you have as an individual to contribute to the change we so badly need in the world is to condemn our future generations. It is to condemn your own descendants. Join the movement, add your voice and include the guidelines into your work. Most importantly, develop your kindness and ability to act from the heart, and finally, remember, the world needs more people to love each other again.
About Joseph Tenzin Oliver
Joseph Tenzin Oliver’s mission is to create, prototype and build cutting-edge methods and experiences that will change the future of the world for the better. A social entrepreneur, artist, meditator and leader, he creates from the heart whilst mixing rational thinking, compassion and action with an ability to make change fun.
He has dedicated his life to advising dozens of companies, governments, social enterprises and non-profits to influence and design new business practices that improve humanitarian and ecological practices. His work spans various industries covering three continents; Europe, Asia and North America. He lived in China for six years, where he founded a strategic innovation consultancy that was known for its leading expertise in China’s current and future trends and sustainable lifestyles. He has also advised on sustainable and smart planning for various cities, including London, and represented the regional and national government of the UK as one of the leading creative innovators of his generation.
He has won numerous awards through consistently pushing the boundaries of professional practice and providing breakthrough experiences. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, the British Council appointed him a Leading Light, the London Sustainable Development Commission awarded him the position of London Leader, and he is an alumni of both the world famous art college Central Saint Martins and the world’s leading business school, Stanford Graduate School of Business. He studied Gross National Happiness for Business Leaders in Bhutan and was a board member for the UK-China Partnership Innovation Challenge Fund and The Green Meetings Industry Council.
In his spare time he continues his passion for photography, advises and guides many emerging entrepreneurs, and is training to be a teacher in a specialist course called Deep Listening, which provides support for those with terminal illness. As a life-long learner he regularly takes part-time courses as diverse as Theory U or how to build neural networks. He is a staunch believer in daily contemplative meditation and considers it to be like going to the gym for the mind. As a keen heart-based activist Joseph supports various charities and causes across the world and is an unceasing optimist about the potential for changing ourselves and our external world for the better.
81 Oxfam, ‘Just 8 men own same wealth as half the world’, www.oxfam.org (January 16, 2017).
82 Bernard Lietaer, pers. comm. (October 28, 1996).
83 Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, The Free Press, Illinois (1950).