How can we stop interhuman self-delusion? The best medicine is thorough general education for all of mankind. It’s really the key that we need to be able to get to the heart of how complex things relate to each other. An ego that is constantly centered around itself will never understand the subtle interrelation that exists between itself and its environment. It will not see how its behavior changes its environment and how this environment reacts in turn to it.
But history teaches us that education alone is not sufficient to turn us into social beings. Understanding must be added—understanding that the concept of the self as an individual is just an illusion. How to acquire this understanding? Well, for example, through books like this one! I make the proposal that every scholar be required to complete a project before graduation in which he has been acting positively on his environment and has experienced the feedback himself. It will be present all of his life. This project should be graded like major subjects. Today we often grade the performance of a scholar only—not his contribution to the well-being of others. Performance-oriented education promotes egotism: Children are groomed to compete with each other instead of supporting one another.
These experiences continue to affect adults as they grow older. Whenever we learn in school that everything in life depends on asserting ourselves, we will do much the same thing in a partnership. Failure has already been preprogrammed in such a partnership. Partners who are serious about living together know that it’s not about asserting oneself, but it’s about discovering new freedoms together. The success recipe for a happy partnership between two human beings is simple: You must always value higher those things that you can achieve together than what either one of you can achieve alone! This is how to seize self-delusion.
I don’t know how things are where you are, but I feel that our society today is colder and more anonymous than what it had been 20 years ago. I’m not alone in my beliefs. Many people share this experience. How can it be that the warmth between all of us continues to fade more and more by each day although we are all the more interconnected to each other with computers and mobile telephones? Do we still perceive each other with hearts and minds whenever we communicate on media like facebook or twitter? We face a clear and present danger, and the danger is ourselves: If we only care about ourselves, no one will care about us!
Economic Self-Delusion
The greatest challenge that we face in the struggle against self-delusion is that it is able to change its outward appearance. As it camouflages itself, it escapes the power and jurisdiction that we have over it. This activity strongly resembles a virus. Human control is very similar to an immune system and it is supposed to protect us from harmful influences. Whenever physical or mental force is prosecuted in many countries, self-delusion quietly spreads in economics. Who of us is aware that stock-market reports brought to us in numerous news magazines are nothing more than subtle propaganda for economic self-delusion?
Shares and equities originally served to provide a corporation with fresh capital so that it could invest in its own infrastructure. But nowadays they have become juggling acts used for business speculation. In the markets money is used just like gambling in a casino. It does not make any difference anymore whether future investments are being put on the progress of companies (see figure 4), on foreign exchange rates of currencies, or on the price of rice in a foreign country. The last thing that speculative markets think about is that food might become unaffordable for millions of people. Markets have no feelings. All that matters is that the achieved profit is as high as possible. Our world—a self-service outlet?
Fig. 4: Economic self-delusion
To profit upon the misfortunes of others is one of the worst examples of economic self-delusion—and it is contagious. Countless advertisements flurry back and forth on the internet where people try to rip off their own (!) species. I am getting spam emails every day that guarantee a fortune or that ask me to match my bank account information. What kind of human beings are wasting their precious life time trying to exploit others?
Unfortunately, politicians are not immune to economic self-delusion either. Corruption is still the first order of the day in many countries. Hush money is never for the common good. Only a few egos make profit on decisions that do not suit most of us. A white-collar trick that is always in bed with corruption is the lobby: Interest groups from the industry set up personal contacts with politicians to influence the making of laws in their favor. Did lobbyists get their way when politicians agreed to new emission control systems that take place in laboratories only? An automobile manufacturer has intentionally manipulated software in his diesel cars to shade harmful effects from their exhaust into the environment.7 My jaw dropped. A renowned international corporation pays its own engineers so that it can scr… its loyal customers and mother nature. You know what word I mean here! A doctor who intentionally poisons his patients would never be allowed to practice again. But mother nature won’t defend herself—yet.
The last example shows that self-delusion doesn’t only affect people, but it also applies to enterprises. Economic self-delusion can act more comprehensively than any interhuman self-delusion. An enterprise that gives itself its own identity and assures its share-holders that it will deliver high dividends, appears like a human ego. The prime concern of most enterprises is profit. Every little perk is accounted for with maximum profit, and every competitor is treated as an enemy. But if all competition is annihilated, who can offer a hand or make a contribution?
Competition is the buzz word taking us to the motives of economic self-delusion. It’s as with egotism—a healthy measure of competition keeps us all alive. Without competition all of the conveyor belts would come to a halt, and life would fail to evolve: A species will live longer the better it is in harmony with its environment. This concept fits natural selection far better than short-sighted formulas like “survival of the fittest” or “better adapted species will survive”. Life is not about showing strength, nor is it about adjusting: What matters far more than anything else is to live in harmony with cosmos. We will expand upon the meaning of this powerful theme together in this book.
But competition will always become a dangerous threat when it mates with greed. Its breeding ground is capitalism. The common practice to increase prices on rising demand demonstrates pure greed. Why does a cozy accommodation cost more in peak season than in any other season of the year? The service offered remains unchanged. I have never been a friend of capitalism—it is robbing our humaneness day by day. I am well aware of the achievements of industrial progress, but the rabid open markets and the unbridled accumulation of private property make me angry. They both are excesses of our striving for individuality. Too few people care enough to give something in return to their society if the economy is slowing down.
So, social rules are what we urgently need now. Social market economy is much fairer than free markets as long as the social component doesn’t fade away. But I’m sorry to say that politicians increasingly shirk their duty to regulate enterprises and markets. The result is disastrous: The gulf between poor and rich has become wider and wider. Whoever is rich becomes even richer; whoever is poor becomes even poorer. Excessive top-level salaries and harsh wage dumping threaten to break humanity apart. It will only be a matter of time before the dam collapses.
Political Self-Delusion
There is another form of greed which is even more threatening to humanity: greed for power. Politics has one primary purpose—make sure that too much power does not fall into the hands of a privileged few. Concentration of power leads to monotony and standstill. But unfortunately, many politicians focus on their own re-election instead of taking effective actions against any people, companies and nations that abuse their powers. Both world wars were fueled by human greed for power. In the First World War, 40 nations took