Business is a Spiritual Enterprise

Business and spirituality are two words that don’t often go together. I would like to suggest that they need to, because it is the denial of the spiritual nature of business that is one of the deep reasons that we are facing the 6th great extinction.

Tigers, coral reefs and all the marine life they support, amphibians such as the golden frog of Panama, orang-utans, sharks, mountain gorillas, the marine iguanas of the Galápagos, albatrosses, chimpanzees and thousands of other creatures now face obliteration: hunted, rendered homeless, and poisoned by humans.

First perhaps it is a good idea to come to a shared understanding of what I mean here by spiritual. I am using it in the sense that my friend Ken Homer does, where he defines spirituality as the deep knowing that we are each a part of a much larger whole. The antonym to spiritual, then, is a sense of disconnection, alienation and isolation. The sense of being apart from the web of life, rather than a part of it.

Howard Silverman, over at People and Place, introduced me to an idea he calls an identity tree, which shows our spiritual relationship up the chain of being. Here is an identity tree that shows an individuals relationship to business, the economy and our global ecosystem.

A person is part of a business, which is part of the economy, which is part of global society, which is part of the web of life, which is part of our planetary ecosystem, which is part of the universe.

A business is as much a part of nature as one of the trees in the photograph above. However, we operate our businesses as if they were disconnected, isolated and alienated from the web of life, not as if they were spiritual entities.

What would happen if the tree were to continually release toxic compounds into its surroundings? To degrade its environment? It is because business does do this that we are heading for the 6th great extinction, which may well include ourselves.

Aldo Leopold once said:

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

How can business start understanding itself as a spiritual enterprise, so that instead of blindly destroying life, it nourishes it?

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Tagged as: Biomimicry, complex systems, green, holistic, spirit, spirituality, Systems thinking

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http://twitter.com/deanpomerleau Dean Pomerleau

Insightful post David. I agree with your observation that for a business to be enlightened it needs to consider the externalities of its operations. Today far too few businesses actually do this.

But I wonder if it can be quite as simple as looking to nature as a guide. Your analogy of a tree not releasing toxic compounds to avoid poisoning its own environment seems like an oversimplification. In fact, trees (and especially plants, which are more vulnerable) DO release toxic compounds in an attempt to get ahead in the competition for survival and growth (e.g. http://bit.ly/7KZ6BG). More generally, we've seen time and time again in nature that an invasive species will run roughshod over the natives if given the opportunity, sometimes forcing them into extinction. Examples in the US include kudzu, water hyacinths, fire ants, zebra mussels & most recently, the Asian carp threatening the great lakes (http://bit.ly/5oAAYf).

In nature, there are no self-imposed 'rules of engagement' preventing one species from profiting at the expense of another. In fact, like it or not, life on our planet is a direct result of the competition between species to better exploit every available resource.

The challenge we face now is that nature's arms race is essentially over on earth, and humans have won. We now have the power to destroy life as we know it, and we appear potentially on a path to do just that, largely as a result of human greed.

But to suggest that this greed is somehow unnatural, and point to natural systems as examples we should emulate, seems to ignore the truth of natural selection.

The problem with natural selection is two-fold. First, it doesn't care about the species or individuals that lose – which doesn't sit well with modern human notions of fairness and compassion. Second, it tends to be shortsighted – 'tragedy of the commons' exploitation of resources is almost the inevitable outcome if those resources are shared and in limited supply.

It seems to me rather than emulating the thoughtless competition between species we see everywhere around us in nature, we need to transcend our natural tendencies to “exploit while the exploitin' is good” and instead think ahead to the long-term consequences of our actions.

The challenge is that this is in opposition to, rather than in alignment with, the tendency instilled in us by the unconscious process of natural selection.
http://twitter.com/deanpomerleau Dean Pomerleau

Insightful post David. I agree with your observation that for a business to be enlightened it needs to consider the externalities of its operations. Today far too few businesses actually do this.

But I wonder if it can be quite as simple as looking to nature as a guide. Your analogy of a tree not releasing toxic compounds to avoid poisoning its own environment seems like an oversimplification. In fact, trees (and especially plants, which are more vulnerable) DO release toxic compounds in an attempt to get ahead in the competition for survival and growth (e.g. http://bit.ly/7KZ6BG). More generally, we've seen time and time again in nature that an invasive species will run roughshod over the natives if given the opportunity, sometimes forcing them into extinction. Examples in the US include kudzu, water hyacinths, fire ants, zebra mussels & most recently, the Asian carp threatening the great lakes (http://bit.ly/5oAAYf).

In nature, there are no self-imposed 'rules of engagement' preventing one species from profiting at the expense of another. In fact, like it or not, life on our planet is a direct result of the competition between species to better exploit every available resource.

The challenge we face now is that nature's arms race is essentially over on earth, and humans have won. We now have the power to destroy life as we know it, and we appear potentially on a path to do just that, largely as a result of human greed.

But to suggest that this greed is somehow unnatural, and point to natural systems as examples we should emulate, seems to ignore the truth of natural selection.

The problem with natural selection is two-fold. First, it doesn't care about the species or individuals that lose – which doesn't sit well with modern human notions of fairness and compassion. Second, it tends to be shortsighted – 'tragedy of the commons' exploitation of resources is almost the inevitable outcome if those resources are shared and in limited supply.

It seems to me rather than emulating the thoughtless competition between species we see everywhere around us in nature, we need to transcend our natural tendencies to “exploit while the exploitin' is good” and instead think ahead to the long-term consequences of our actions.

The challenge is that this is in opposition to, rather than in alignment with, the tendency instilled in us by the unconscious process of natural selection.