When life is reduced to money and finance

ONE of the interesting observations mentioned in the recently concluded plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences (April 30-May 4) is the disturbing trend, more notable in developed countries, to reduce life and our economic activities in almost exclusive terms of money and finance.

Let’s quote some words of the Academy’s rapporteur to give us a good idea of the crisis we are facing these days:

“The current economic crisis has its roots in the financial sector. Indeed, one invited speaker…spoke of a shift from an economy based on the real production of goods to an economy dominated by speculative activities driven by greed.

“The fragility of the economic system was partly a consequence of an overreliance on speculative financial activities separated from productive activity in the real economy.

“Two members of our economy…spoke more broadly of the danger of the ‘financialization’ of human relations, in which human activities, even in the family, are reduced to a merely commercial dimension.

“One of our guests…pointed out the danger of thinking even of business firms in this way, where the corporation ceases to be an association of persons and become a commodity instead. Such a ‘financialized’ approach to the social order not only narrows the vision of the human person but creates instability in the economy.”

I feel that these words should be given more attention and traction first by our leaders, economic, social and political, and later by everyone in general, so we all be aware of what is wrong with the way we do business, and from there we can have ideas of how to correct our predicament.

It’s not that we don’t need money and finance in our life. Everyone knows they are indispensable, especially as we grow both in number and quality and aspects of our life. We just have to avoid limiting our life purely in those terms. There’s a lot more to life than money and finance.

But how can we avoid this serious pitfall when we can always presume everyone is working for the good of all? Pope Benedict XVI, when opening the sessions, practically gave a clue when he diagnosed the present ills as a result of a badly understood nature of our economic activities.

“The economic crisis,” he said, “has shown the error of the assumption that the market is capable of regulating itself, apart from public intervention and the support of internalized moral standards.

“This assumption is based on an impoverished notion of economic life as a sort of self-calibrating mechanism driven by self-interest and profit-seeking. As such, it overlooks the essentially ethical nature of economics as an activity of and for human beings.”

We need to follow this cue of the Pope. We have to develop a greater sensitivity toward the true nature of our economic activity as it is played out in real life. We cannot afford to remain shallow in this basic point, especially now when even a little mistake in this area can have tremendous adverse effects.

If there is such a thing as “jurisprudence” which collects all the good insights, philosophy, science and experiences related to the legal aspect of our life, there should be some kind of “economic prudence” that continually gathers the same pertinent materials for our unavoidable economic life.

This “economic prudence,” just like the prudence we ought to cultivate in the other aspects of our life, should be based on the true nature of man. I think much of the problem we have now lies on the ignorance and confusion surrounding this question.

We need to overcome our awkwardness and incompetence to relate our economic activities to the true nature of man which, in its turn, derives from our core beliefs, our faith and religion.

These aspects are inseparably linked, though they have their proper distinctions, which should also be respected. No illicit shortcuts here, please, otherwise we would just be led to blind alleys.

The challenge we are facing now is how to bring our economic activity to both a higher and deeper level. We have to be entirely convinced that our economic activity has to be grounded on God himself before it can be truly human, effectively serving the various dimensions of the authentic common good.

In short, when our economic activity is pursued independently or even against our relation of God, we would have every reason to be suspicious of it. We can even be certain, that in spite of its temporary perks and advantages, it can have no other end but disaster.