Culture must value more than money

The Employees’ Retirement System of Hawaii has become a signatory to the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), as reported in the Star-Advertiser on May 15 (“ERS commits to socially responsible investing”). These principles are designed to guide investments that serve not only the profit of the investor but also “the good of the whole.” This includes social justice, protection of human rights, good governance and most of all, fostering the health of the natural world, the ultimate source of our lives, values and meaning.

This decision by ERS is also aligned with Hawaii’s environmental and renewable energy mandate and the state’s support of global initiatives in sustainability such as the Paris Climate Agreement.

As a University of Hawaii professor and an ERS constituent, I have a personal financial stake in my retirement fund. But what is at issue is of far greater importance. Market forces only produce wise outcomes to the degree that participants guide their financial and investment transactions with wisdom.

What, then, is wisdom? At its most basic, it is a matter of aligning the highest good of the individual with the good of the whole. How can we bring wisdom into the DNA of our political culture?

We live in a world of extreme inequality, endemic government corruption, polarizing ideologies and violent conflict. We have a global economy still in the grip of rampant greed and ruthless self-interest. Six private individuals collectively own wealth equal to the poorest 3.7 billion people. We are committed to endless material growth, which is depleting natural resources, polluting natural systems and devastating the biosphere.

For example, our blind commitment to fossil fuel profits has been driving global warming and climate change to the point where the Pentagon has declared the situation to be “an immediate threat to national security.” Deserts are expanding in 100 countries, while the United Nations warns that by 2030, demand for fresh water is expected to overshoot supply by 40 percent.

We can no longer rely on the blind mechanism of the market to do our thinking for us concerning the welfare of the whole. The good news is that a global cultural transformation is underway, a grass-roots shift in values and consciousness, of which the ERS initiative is a part.

Instinctively, people are recoiling from the idea of leaving the next generation with a more polluted, damaged and degraded planet than the one we were born into. We have a deep hunger to be of service to others and to live meaningful lives.

The ERS commitment is a good opportunity to accelerate the work of creating a wisdom-based political economy. This is precisely the challenge taken up by our Institute for a New Political Cosmology at UH-West Oahu. The primary mission of the Institute is to clarify and disseminate simple, intuitive principles for living meaningful lives, more attuned to reality, serving the flourishing of life on Earth.

These perennial principles of wisdom — the Truth Quest — are rooted in the structure of human consciousness and as such, accessible to all. They are found in many indigenous cultures and in spiritual traditions across the world. They function as a moral compass for both individual and society.

With the rise of industrial modernity, the wisdom of the truth quest has been relegated to the sidelines of public life at terrible cost.

The Institute is committed to clarifying and practicing these principles and infusing them into our educational and political cultures. We support all initiatives, such as the one by ERS, that work toward leaving the Earth and human community in better condition than we received them.

Louis Herman is founder and director of the Institute for a New Political Cosmology at the University of Hawaii at West Oahu (louisher@hawaii.edu).