Chapter XIII of the Rio Plus 20 Document by Cho Tab Khen Zambuling (Alfredo Sfeir-Younis)
XIII. Economic Diseases And Radical Detoxification
Global warming could also be considered the fever that comes from a number of economic diseases. In many ways, all forms of pollution and global warming are also powerful forms of toxicity. They are toxic and have become a major source of human diseases of the body as well of the mind. To address the major sources of economic diseases like global, humanity needs to engage in different processes of human transformation. The changes will not necessarily be easy for some people. A few examples are outlined below:
Changing Our Approach to Health. Today, most societies follow a health approach that could be labeled as a human adaptability model rather than a human health model. In many instances, medicine is not addressing the ultimate causes and conditions of diseases, particularly of those diseases that result from the deterioration or contamination of our environment. Instead, medicine generally addresses the symptoms, rather than changing the quality of the environment contributing to many diseases. This has led to a pharmaceutical industry, which produces medicines that maintain a state of toxic equilibrium rather than produce the conditions for healing. And, technological change is biased in favor of the development of external palliatives instead of solving the causes of diseases that plague humanity.
Diminishing The Negative Impacts. Many times those making decisions do not foresee the possible negative impacts into our material or spiritual transformation. As stated at the very beginning of this book, most people do not understand how the destruction of the natural environment affects our spiritual growth. We are less sensitive to this form of interdependence. Our spiritual development is now compromised and can be mutilated by the destruction of our natural external environment.
Avoiding Sensorial Deterioration. We are in an advanced state of sensorial degeneration. As we maintain ourselves at higher levels of toxicity, we numb our senses (vision, audition) and consequently seeing more destruction, for example, does not disturb us. This process clearly begins by the shutting down of our sensorial system. It is our senses that play the role of connectors with our inner self, influencing our perceptions of the external world. These perceptions also affect our ability to tap into our inner wisdom and we must avoid the existing process of degeneration. To live a healthy life in the material world, it is not only important to see and have a healthy physical optical system, but we need also powerful wisdom in our vision. The same applies to other sensorial capacities and organs.
How do we induce or actually realize the needed changes? Maybe a few possible steps may help in the reflection over economic diseases and toxicity.
1. Focus on Our Human Collective (Mahayana). To conceive material and spiritual growth not for our individual benefit alone but for the benefit of all human beings, living beings, and sentient beings. Our transformation must be embedded in the transformation of everyone else. This is not just an issue of equity or justice, but also an issue of balancing the already imbalanced process of human transformation. We are failing at the level of the collective. The value system is generally individualistic, not universal and in favor of exclusion. It is competitive and not cooperative.
2. Understand The Ultimate Causes and Conditions. To understand that the ultimate cause of economics and business diseases –like those resulting from global warming– is the low level of human consciousness. For example, money is human consciousness expressed in a material way. Money could never provide the functions of exchange or unit of account if there were no trust and awareness for that to happen. In the same vein, the ultimate cause of matter is non-matter. Thus, we need to bring consciousness into the process of material transformation. To get rid of many negative aspects of our lives we have to eliminate their causes and conditions. Otherwise, there will be more of the same.
3. Create An Appropriate Enabling Environment. To create an enabling environment for change within both the outer and inner environments. Material development is important and, therefore, our material environment outside us is very central to a sustainable society. Equally important is our inner environment so that spiritual growth can also take place. As we reach higher and higher levels of human self-realization we will experience that there is no difference really between the outer and inner environments, both of them forming one holistic reality.
4. Exalt The Importance of Morals And Ethics. To know with more precision whether we are moving towards the “right” direction and whether the process of human transformation has to be changed and in what direction. In this respect, no human activity –including economics and business– can exist within a moral and ethical vacuum. In most cases, the morals and ethics of human activities are revealed through the value system that supports it. We must develop a new form of eco-stewardship. It is a stewardship based on love and compassion.
5. Bring The Non Material And The Sacred. To realize that human change must not only be dominated by material considerations, as we have to embrace the non-material and the sacred in everything we do. We must bring the spirit into all professions –in the case of economics by making it the science of abundance rather than the science of scarcity. This implies that the core goal of all we do must nurture the values of life. This is the most effective way to major investments in enhancing and expanding our spiritual capital.
6. Embrace ‘Being’ and ‘Becoming’ In Action. To know that life is an experience. Our professions are also an experience. They happen mostly as a result of the human desire for doing, having and knowing. But, these are not enough as we must develop the experiences of being and becoming. Our professions must create the space and time for human self-realization in each their respective processes. Each and every aspect of one’s material life must contribute to the human self-realization of one or more dimensions of our lives.
7. Get Engaged In The Search For Total Inclusion. To adopt universal and all inclusive human values. Everything we do must be for the benefit of all. Exclusion creates more problems and violence around the world. Universality is the space that holds everyone without judgment and attitudes. In a world of so many people, it is essential to live in the realm of the universal and to make peace with the environment.
8. Become Fully Aware of The Welfare Of All Beings. To know that we are one collective reality and that we are all one. The more we feel alone, independent, and isolated from the rest, the more negative the outcomes we will create. Higher realms of human progress and transformation are, by definition, collective. Thus, we must become fully aware of the impacts we have on others and the impacts others have upon ourselves and act with this awareness. A community of love, compassion, reciprocity and generosity are preconditions for human renewal.
To read the full Rio Plus 20 Statement click HERE.
