The Financial Philosopher

The Crisis in Consciousness

"…and considering what the world is now, with all the misery, conflict, destructive brutality, aggression, tremendous advancement in technology, and so on… it seems to me, though man has cultivated the external world and has more or less mastered it, inwardly he is still as he was: He is still brutal, violent, aggressive, inquisitive, competitive. And he has built a society along these lines." ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

All crises in the world--personal, interpersonal, international, financial, cultural, political, religious--are rooted in a greater crisis. 

To borrow a phrase from the great 20th century spiritual leader Jiddu Krishnamurti, the world has for decades been in something he aptly labeled a crisis in consciousness.  To summarize some of his philosophies and incorporate similar ideas, here is a summary of points that describe the root of almost every problem that exists on the planet today:

• As a human being in the 21st century, the challenge to remain conscious--to obtain and maintain self-awareness--is greater than at any other time in history. This challenge arises from the attraction and distraction of illusion, which has increased its intensity, breadth and effectiveness with the massive and rapid growth of technology. 
• The ability to be someone else and to be somewhere else other than who you are or where you are, respectively, is growing every day.
• The more civilized the society, the greater the capacity to escape reality--to dream, to hope, to buy and sell illusion.
• The Information Age is one of knowledge, which is not the same as wisdom.  Knowledge is superficial; it is shallow; it has breadth but it has no depth.  It is all brain and no mind or spirit.  Knowledge feeds the ego and starves the Self.
• As a human, you prefer states that are temporary, rather than traits that are lasting.  Almost every product or service that is bought or sold today is used to help others enter the state they desire and to re-enter the state when that one begins to fade. 
• Most people stumble from pleasure to pleasure, doing their best to manufacture happiness.  However happiness stretches and it thus becomes increasingly difficult to reach.  You convince yourself that more money is needed to buy more things and the proverbial carrot-chasing, rat-racing existence continues.
• You consume things and increase your appetite for them; and your identity can be constructed completely of physical world forms, such as ideas, concepts, clothes, cars, houses, physical appearance and so on.  You think that, without the things, you are no longer yourself.
• Computers, hand-held devices, social media, print media and everything you see on television is designed to distract and attract your attention, to convince you to buy the things to become the advertised identity.
• However, you are not the things; you are your attention; and if you are constantly distracted, you leave little possibility to be authentic, to be your Self; you become fragmented, others become fragmented, and so the world becomes fragmented. 
• When you pay attention, what price are you paying and what are you receiving in return?  Think about that.
• All of your biases and preconceived notions can be shaped by "Liking" only people and sources of information that agree with your egocentric view of the world. Your worldview can become more and more narrow and you may find yourself "against" more and more people but "for" nothing that is authentically you.

And so we have a great paradox:  The world is more connected than ever but it is also more fragmented.  People around the planet have the capacity for greater love and understanding of eachother, and also for understanding themselves as unique personalities.  However we form figurative islands that separate and categorize, sharpen ideology and dichotomy, and thus create more stark divisions of financial, social, political and religious groups, which then create greater potential for interpersonal and international conflicts.

"See if you can catch, that is to say, notice, the voice in the head, perhaps in the very moment it complains about something, and recognize it for what it is: the voice of the ego, no more than a conditioned mind-pattern, a thought. Whenever you notice that voice, you will also realize that you are not the voice, but the one who is aware of it." ~ Eckhart Tolle

There are always crises in the world and they are all rooted in the crisis of consciousness.  This is not deterministic or pessimistic, just observation.  It is foolish to fight against nature and this includes human nature.  It is natural for simplicity to evolve into complexity and for complexity to eventually return to simplicity.  However humans also have the unique capacity for awareness--to think about thinking--to have a hand in our own evolution.  Technology, and all of the devices that fall under this broad heading, can be used as a tool, just as I am using it as a tool to reach you now. 

As Krishnamuriti said, "you are the world psychologically, and the world is you; and when you understand yourself you are understanding the whole human structure and nature."  To help the world overcome the lower crises that fall under the greater crisis in consciousness, you begin by helping yourself, by learning more about yourself and eventually being your Self.

A great central theme of this blog is to wake people and to keep them awake.  I am fortunate enough to have awakened from a constant, losing battle of keeping myself in an illusory state.  The illusion was that everything must always be improving: Climb the corporate ladder, make more money, buy bigger and better things, and so on.  To battle the stress of this existence, I survived by looking forward to the end of the day, to the end of the week, the holiday, the vacation, and the retirement.  I was always Becoming but never Being.  But at what cost?  I was never living in the present moment, where life resides; I was caught in the crisis of consciousness.

I will have more soon on some personal developments in my life that may help you overcome the crisis in consciousness in your own life.  Thanks for reading.

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Related:

The 'Experience-Stretching Hypothesis'

How Ego Hurts You (And How to Overcome It)

The Diminishing Marginal Utility of Wealth

The American Awakening

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If the so-called American Dream is a hyper-intentional motivation to give our children a greater financial future than we have now, at the expense of perpetuating the idea that higher net worth is necessary for higher self worth, I choose the American Awakening instead...

Amidst recent high school and college graduations, the observation of Fathers Day in America and the rising presence of political banter surrounding the US presidential election, I have seen and heard the phrase "American Dream" many times.

As parents and as stewards of the future of our country we have been fed the idea that our children must be better off than us; and the measuring stick for "better" is a financial one.  Anything less is a failure!  How can we live with ourselves if we leave our children with a country in worse economic condition than we found it?  But who or whom is talking about the mental, spiritual and physical well-being of our children, our country and our world?

"Paradoxically, what keeps the so-called consumer society going is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn't work: The ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more, keep buying, keep consuming." ~ Eckhart Tolle

The paradox is that this kind of thinking created the economic problems that exist around the globe today: 

• I don't have enough so I'll buy more. 
• When my things break, I won't fix them--I'll just throw them away and replace them with new ones. 
• I don't have any more money so I'll borrow more money to satisfy my wants.
• I'll never lose my job so I'll borrow as much as the bank will allow. 
• The bank executive thinks his or her institution will never run out of financial resources because home values will never fall and so they must take greater risk to lend more money to all the consumers hungry for it.

I'm not saying we shouldn't teach our children the value of money and how to provide for themselves financially, but I am saying that we fail our children and our future when we implicitly teach them that more is better and that one's identity is found in things--the clothes, the cars, the houses, and the lifestyle--that never seem to be "good enough."

"Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world.  It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories." ~ Ray Bradbury

The metaphor of "the dream" is useful for my point.  If this dream is the desired and preferred state, the only way to remain in it is to continue feeding it with more and better things.  How can I be happy with these old clothes?  What will people think if they see me in this junky car?  I'm not satisfied with who I am or where I am now.  Therefore I must be somebody or be somewhere else to be satisfied.  I am not successful if I do not appear successful.

All are lies.

In addition to the things, the destinations--escapes from reality--are crucial to remain in the American Dream state.  We live for the end of the work day, the weekend, the vacation and the retirement.  When a new day or new week begins, or when we return from the vacation, we say, "Well I guess it's back to reality now."  And so we must find another escape, another way to get back to the dream.

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle." ~ Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Speech, 2005

If the opposite of dreaming is awakening, we can all do ourselves, our friends, and our children a service by helping them awaken--to tell them and show them:

• Money is a powerful tool but not a destination;
• Things can be yours but you are not your things;
• Dwelling in the past or wishing for the future removes you from life; and
• Dreaming is healthy but dreams are not a place to stay.

There is nothing wrong with financial wealth but to make it one's highest goal (or to knowingly or unknowingly teach new generations to make it theirs) can actually make the American Dream more of a nightmare. 

Most of the wealthiest people in the world have said that they acquired their wealth by acting authentically--they were led by the desire to be who they are, not by the desire to accumulate massive wealth.  If the money followed their authentic behavior, so be it.  If they had a "dream" it did not remain a dream--it was transposed into reality by their actions. 

"One infinitesimal accomplishment in reality is worth a mountain of dreams." ~ Dorothea Brande

In different words, the most successful people did not constantly seek temporary states; they discovered (and were led by) their own traits.  They did not live to dream--they dreamed to live.   They were never Becoming but were always Being.

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Related:

The Knowing-Doing Gap

Defeating the 'Hobgoblin of Little Minds'

The Deconstruction of Social Conventions & The 'Unlearning Process'

On Facebook & Fragmentation: A Tale of Two Realities

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." ~ Charles Dickens

This passage from Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities aptly describes the paradox of modern technology, especially social media, which is increasingly defining (and dividing) modern culture:  With unprecedented amounts of tools to create our own reality, humans have equal capacity to either use the information as a tool to increase quality of life or to be perpetually distracted and fragmented so thinly that life fades quietly into a false reality that is increasingly reliant upon the comfort and convenience of illusion.

All of one's biases and preconceived notions can be shaped by "Liking" only people and sources of information that agree with one's egocentric views of the world.  We create our own radio stations or subscribe to those only with music that we already know; We subscribe to news feeds that only agree with our political, religious and financial positions.

"You are where your attention takes you.  In fact, you are your attention.  If your attention is fragmented, you are fragmented..." ~ Deepak Chopra

The paradox of social media is that it's ability to bring millions of people together is the same cause of dividing people into smaller groups; the greatest unifying force of human kind today is a cause of its fragmentation.  We consume information but we don't pause to think of what it is that information consumes.  It consumes our attention; and if our attention is consumed, our mind--our reality--is fragmented.

People no longer belong to physical communities; they belong to cyber-tribes.  What once defined culture has been broken into millions of pieces.  For example, personal music stations are self-created on websites, such as Pandora, so there is little chance for those without self-awareness to discover musical genres and artists that stretch beyond one's personal taste--there are no surprises and there are few opportunities to move beyond the boundaries we create for ourselves.

Self-created reality is attractive but if you want to grow as a human and if you want to open your mind to all possibilities, you will adopt the scientific method that says, "Prove yourself wrong."  This is difficult to do in a world that provides limitless means to prove yourself right without even thinking for yourself.

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Related: Beware of Confirmation Bias