Interlude: Woke Capitalism is not Conscious/Stakeholder Capitalism (Part 1)

In this entry, I want to delineate between Conscious/Stakeholder Capitalism (which I believe in) and Woke Capitalism (which I don’t). As an ideology, wokeism tends to contaminate our understanding of the social systems that we are a part of, and seeks to break apart the structures that are said to be oppressive or inequitable to those labelled as ‘disadvantaged groups’ within society. With one of the central features of capitalism appearing to be the unequal distribution of wealth that accrues to capitalists at the expense of the working class, this is seen by those who advocate for this woke philosophy as justification for the demonization of that system as being inferior to socialism, despite its idealised version never having worked historically to bring about the utopia that it promises. But caught in this cross-fire has been a new paradigm for business, very close to my heart, that I feel has been bastardised by these ideologues, and had its utility delegitimised in the eyes of those who conflate the two as advocating for the same things.

Before I turn my attention to outlining the hollow tenets of woke capitalism, I want to set the stage for understanding what conscious/stakeholder capitalism is, and how it builds upon the premise and promise of the capitalist system. Conscious capitalism holds that for individuals, organisations and businesses to thrive there must be more orienting their activity than just the profit motive. Sitting at the centre of that motivational/inspirational system must be a deeper purpose, or reason for being, that justifies their existence in the economy and community as an instrument for making both spheres function better. If you think about it, business is all about service and adding value to the lives of those who a business serves, or else why would any customer come to a business and part with their money? For what purpose? So there must be something that they are offering which improves the lived experience of those whom they serve. This is the foundation.

Around this guiding purpose are evolved leaders who embody the depth of character to enact the spiritual virtues that undergird the movement. These leaders play a pivotal part in proliferating these virtues in their organisations to create a conscious culture. They do this by tapping into the vocational alignment that their people have for the orienting purpose, and empower/equip them to do their best work in service of that mission. The other key component of the model are stakeholders who the organisation works with to do what it does. These stakeholders of course include staff and customers, but also integrate suppliers, shareholders, governmental bodies, competitors in the market and the community more broadly. The idea here is that a thriving ecosystem enriches the condition of all entities within it, and as each prosper, they all prosper. This also explains why conscious capitalism is otherwise referred to as stakeholder capitalism.

On this last point, this is where this win-win-win paradigm distinguishes conscious capitalism from traditional capitalism. In stating his formative ideas of modern capitalism, one of the most foremost economics thinkers, Milton Friedman, posited that the primary obligation that a company has is to its shareholders, and whatever decisions serve the best interests of this constituency then that is the course of action that a company’s directors should take. The problem with this very myopic view is that when it is put into practice, it gives rise to very perverse incentive structures and behaviours that profit a select group of stakeholders at the expense of the many others. It also prioritises a short term perspective of doing business where you try to get what you can now without regard to what the externalities or longer terms consequences to those other people involved in the organisation may be. ‘Greed is good’ said ruthless Wall Street character Gordon Gekko, and whatever are the means to acquire that end wealth is justified as a necessary sacrifice for that monetary acquisition. This however is simply not sustainable, and if every individual acted this way, then there would not be enough resources to go around and ensure the basic living standards of the most vulnerable members of society. As is usually the case in periods of dearth and economic contraction, those at the bottom of the pyramid are hit hardest, and if these individuals are backed into a corner of desperation, not even the strongest gates of steel that money can buy will protect their owners from the retributive urges of the mob at the gate that are intent on reclaiming at least part of what they feel justly entitled to as contributing members of society.

None of this is to say that making money or profits are inherently bad either as conscious capitalism recognises this as absolutely necessary to have a thriving and sustainable enterprise that can continue to enrich the lives of its customers and ensure the livelihood of those who work within it. It is just that this money making is not the primary motivation for why they do what they do. Being subjugated to the primacy of purpose, there is an unwavering trust from the leaders of these conscious enterprises that these profits will come if that purpose is pursued wholeheartedly and the quality of service rendered is reflective of the collective commitment to it. The metaphor that I love with this is that of food and drink for the body as being symbolic of profits that an entity/body clearly needs in order to survive. But the reason for being of the person who inhabits the body is not to eat and drink (it is to enact a socially meaningful and fulfilling vocational purpose), and if they deny this reality and hedonistically indulge these physical urges then they will cause the organism to become diseased over time. Such disease could be seen in the global financial crisis of 2008, the corporate collapse of companies like Enron and WorldCom in the early 2000’s, and the Royal Commission into the Australian Banking sector in 2019.    

Role Models for Realists (Part 2)

Just as no one has it all together in their personal and professional lives, so will we have to reconcile that same reality with ourselves. No matter how far we progress on our journey, there will always be things that we struggle with and don’t have a handle on to the extent that we would like others to believe that we do. New levels do indeed bring new devils, and if we don’t have the solidity of character to be able to see these dangers as they present themselves and navigate them effectively, then we put ourselves at risk of the same fall that others have experienced on their journey to the top.

As harshly as I wanted to judge this barrister for his misdeeds, I needed to have the humility to see that I have the same vulnerabilities that put in the right (or wrong) circumstances would guide my behaviour in a similarly destructive way. I think often we make the mistake of seeing these errors of judgement and write off the person who has made them as an unworthy teacher, but this to me misses a fertile opportunity for growth. The error of judgment is the valuable lesson that we have the benefit of being able to incorporate prior to encountering the situation that could have ensnared us had we remained naïve to our blind spots and the inherent temptations that were present in the situation.

For this we should have gratitude, as anything that rightly observed prevents us from having to endure suffering, serves us in enabling the choice towards a more prosperous path of behaviour. It is so easy to take this for granted, but if I am paying attention and come to learn what will steer me down the wrong path, the more I can take heed of that detour eventuating and plan to stay on a track that will bring me closer to where I ultimately want to be. Given the brutal reality that it takes much of our lives to build our character (and reputation), and that we can fracture both of these things in an instant by corrupted behaviour, the value of these harsh lessons that others such as the barrister have to offer us for free come at a premium.

If knowing that going up to that hotel room for a drink could lead to an extramarital affair, then you can wisely choose to part company in the lobby. If knowing that saying something derogatory to a superior when your emotion is high and logic is low can cause consternation in that working relationship, then you can take a deep breath and reclaim your message so that it is better received. If knowing that the climbing of a hierarchy is likely to engender a heightened sense of self-importance, then we can check our ego when thoughts of abusing our privilege come to mind.

The big trap here is thinking that those adverse consequences couldn’t happen to us, which is evidence itself of the delusionary presence of the ego within. Since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, I have been reading a lot of material about authoritarian strongman figures and their political journeys to national leadership. While one can argue that many of these leaders were morally corrupt before they attained the reaches of highest office, I was surprised to learn of examples where the leaders started out with pushing strong pro-social policies that were geared towards improving the condition of public life amongst their populous. What then went wrong in those examples?

While there were likely a multitude of different factors that contributed to their undoing, one of the most prominent was what is known as ‘ethical fading’. Ethical fading is the gradual deterioration of one’s moral compass that through a series of unreflective decisions leads them towards ever increasing levels of corruption. As I say to my students when I am teaching them good governance and social responsibility, nobody starts out stealing $50 million. How the corruption normally starts is through theft of an amount much smaller than this, but because they get away with it, they are then emboldened to take greater risks by stealing larger amounts of money that others will be more inclined to notice if they are looking in the right places. In these situations where greed and a sense of entitlement (both manifestations of the ego) has taken the leader over, they will not have been paying the right attention to the warning signs of what is to come that I have advocated for in the paragraphs prior. For the most part when we read stories of corruption, we know how the story is going to end, and there comes a point when we feel a vicarious sense of dread knowing that the protagonist has passed the threshold of no return when they are going to get found out and prosecuted. Had these individuals not paid attention to the hard lessons of history where great leaders and their empires were undone by their indulgence of hubris? Clearly not, but the chances are high that they were aware of the stories, which may even have served as a motivation for their own lusting for power. The big failure here was not taking on the learning as a cautionary tale and allowing those occurrences to teach them that they were liable to fall into the same pit if they thought that those adverse outcomes would not happen to them. No doubt, history repeats itself for the ignorant and arrogant who deny the past to preserve an idealised (but unreconciled) image of who they want to portray in the present.  

The Riches in your Backyard (Part 2)

I think that many of us throughout the course of our lives have fallen into the trap of looking at other people who have journeyed far and wide to achieve worldly success, and interpreted that to mean that our success is dependent on us taking a similar path. While there are no doubt cases of individuals who have blossomed in places where they have replanted themselves, they have most likely achieved this because of the inner treasure that they had already awakened to within themselves, and taken with them to their new environment. It could also have been the case that in their transitioning, they experienced significant growth or clarity surrounding how to effectively put their gifts to use in enhancing the value which others in that environment would derive from their presence.

A big part of Ali Hafed’s problem concerning this point was that from the moment he ventured out beyond his farm, to the time that he gave up on life, his sole focus was on acquiring diamonds to make himself unspeakably wealthy. Being animated by this selfish motivation, and ignorant towards what he was truly after (a deeper form of contentment that extended beyond what he left behind on the farm), he limited himself greatly on his search, and bypassed many other potential forms of prosperity that could have been seized upon if only he was more open-minded and generous with what he had to offer to the world. At this point it is worth remembering that Ali Hafed was already rich from what he had built on the farm, so there is evidence that he had already learned to apply his giftedness and character to deliver value in that context.

With his blinders on, and greed having contaminated his heart, he suffered a similar fate to the mythical character Icarus, who couldn’t help himself from flying towards the sun in order to subsume its power. By making diamonds his false idol, Ali Hafed made the foolish decision to leave behind everything that had real value in his life, most notably his family. Whatever virtues that he may have embodied with his being, it appears to be clear that gratitude and humility were not among them. As a husband and father of two, I can’t ever imagine being compelled to separate myself from my wife and children to chase something that could never mean as much as they do. Having said that, I am aware of the danger in allowing our ego to have us believe that we are above being taken off course by shiny objects that appear on our path.

When we lack gratitude for the blessings in our life, then our ego can quickly lead us down a slippery slope to a form of hell that is nigh on impossible to recover from. As lonely and painful as Ali Hafed’s experience must have been before acting on the decision to end his life, I think that by us trying to imagine his utter desolation in taking the course that he did, we can be oriented in a more purposeful direction, with a greater perspective for what is most important in our life. By also reading this story as a cautionary tale, we can proactively work to avoid these kinds of pitfalls as we journey forward.  

Rather than allowing what we can gain or accomplish in the future to consume our attention, a wiser course would be to centre ourselves in the knowledge of who and where we are presently, so that we can successfully navigate the circumstances that we have in front on us. Being itself a building block for the unfolding of spirit that we yearn to realise, I see every moment carrying a tremendous power that transcends its fleeting quality. Constituting a gateway through which our action can match our conscious intention to create a meaningful life, these precious segments of life are not something that we should take for granted, or allow to be frittered away in the vain wishing that what fills them should be better than they currently appear.

The Riches in your Backyard (Part 1)

In Acres of Diamonds, Russell H. Conwell recounts a story that he was once told by an old Arab guide as he travelled down the rivers of the Middle East. In this story, there was a man named Ali Hafed, who was a very rich farmer but not content with what he had. When visited by an old priest, Hafed learns of the wealth promised to the man who has diamonds, and he makes it his mission to find and make his own mine of diamonds. So the next day, he sold his farm, collected his money and left his family, before leaving to search for the precious jewels. He ventured far and wide through Palestine and into Europe, but all to no avail. Having exhausted his reserve of funds without finding the diamonds, nor the contentedness that his dream promised, he became the embodiment of human tragedy and threw himself into the ocean, ending his life.

Then one day, while out in the field with one of his camels, the man who had purchased Ali Hafed’s farm, came across a curious stone, which he brought back to the farmhouse and placed on his mantle. Oblivious to what he had discovered, the man continued on dutifully with his business until one day the same old priest came to visit him. Once inside, the priest happened to spot the rare find on the mantle, and exclaimed that it was a diamond! At this, both men rushed out into the field where the jewel was found, and came across many more of them in the soil and riverbeds. As history would have it, the fields of that farm became the mine of Golconda, the greatest diamond mine the world has ever known.

What this story has to teach us is that the source of our prosperity is available to us where we are, despite what the world has to say about the grass being greener in other pastures. Prosperity, in the sense that I am using it here, encompasses so much more than the accumulation of wealth in the material sense. It is the connectedness and spiritual centeredness on which we build a harmonious and abundant life. From this integral alignment, the material forms of wealth have the best chance of showing up in our life, without us having to go and chase them, or compromise ourselves in that pursuit.

As materially rich as Ali Hafed was, he never appreciated this truth. Seeing the source of his prosperity as residing ‘out there’ rather than within himself, his death in the story represents the death that we experience when we see the world as he did. When the way in which we see ourselves is characterised by dearth and poverty, we are going to feel deficient, discontented and resentful of the world that holds what we perceive ourselves as lacking. This will lead us to act out our own version of Ali Hafed’s journey towards the ‘promised’ land of our ego.

For our ego, who we are and what we have in the here and now is never enough, and this provides the rationale or motivation to move out into the world to acquire more. With more, it has us believe, life will be better, and we will be able to succeed on a scale that draws the esteem of others in our environment and on our social media pages. Even through our observing of the social media postings of others, this impetus to acquire more is inflamed by the fear of us missing out and losing ground in the game of ‘more is better’. But all of that is an illusion, just as Ali Hafed’s journey to find the diamond mind of his dreams was a figment of his imagination. The opportunity that we have to unearth our riches is not dependant on a future state for its realisation. Being available in the present moment, that inner journey of excavating what we most want, in the last place that we would think to look, can commence at any time that we care to initiate the process.