Spiritual Capital: Wealth We Can Live by

This review is an adaptation of my review published in Personnel Psychology, Summer Issue, 2005. Zohar is broadly trained and thus taps into diverse resources such as classical literature, physics, religion, and psychology. Marshall is a Jungian-oriented psychiatrist and psychotherapist. Married to each other, the authors would make, I think, engaging conversationalists at my imaginary dinner party, provided that at the table they didn't repeat from their book the following tale by Ovid. The Greek poet's tale is about Erisychthon, pronounced Erisyathon for any name droppers, a mythological character who, because he was so greedy, was cursed to eat everything in sight including him self after all else had been consumed. He symbolizes, the authors believe, the essence of materialistic capitalism, an insatiable "monster devouring itself." The authors' main theme is that a "critical mass" of individuals can make a positive difference. This theme seems to have been influenced by Jung's philosophy that "great transformations" in history are a summation of positive changes in individuals. The authors argue that material capitalism, the kind that predominates in Corporate America and Wall Street, is unsustainable and thus "in a state of crisis." It's depleting our natural resources, creating political and social instability, eroding our moral standards, and degrading the very meaning of life in terms of its deepest values and aspirations. Rather than reject this conventional capitalism altogether, however, the authors advocate transforming it into a more positive, sustainable economic system that they call "spiritual capitalism" in the secular, non-religious sense. It's defined as the amount of knowledge and expertise available about "meaning, values, and fundamental purposes." It produces not material wealth that ultimately consumes itself but a self-sustaining wealth "that enriches the deeper aspects of our lives." The authors list 12 qualities that companies "high in spiritual capital" would possess. For example, they would be "self-aware," "vision and value-led," and "compassionate" and would "have a sense of vocation." Are there any companies high in spiritual capital? The authors don't cite any companies that possess all 12 qualities or even most of them, which is an opportunity missed because they developed a set of descriptors that could have been built into a good survey instrument. The auhors argue that material capitalism is in a state of crisis, which they say is one of negative motivations, with the four primary ones being self assertion or competitiveness, anger, craving or greed, and fear. Most of the book, therefore, is devoted to explaining Marshall's "Scale of Motivations" and in speculating on how it, along with emotional and spiritual intelligence, can be used to raise motivation to a sufficient level among a sufficient number of business leaders to produce a "great transformation" first in their own companies

Danah Zohar is still probably best known as an author for her 1990 book The Quantum Self. She is also very well-known as a speaker and is one of the select group of people who has driven forward our understanding of ourselves, our organizations and our society as complex adaptive systems. With her holistic view of the world, she is very sensitive to the connections or failures of connection that have such an impact on society and the lives of individuals. This book has as its primary focus the disconnection between the deepest needs and aspirations of humans and acceptance of the single-minded pursuit of profit as the sole imperative on business other than staying within the law. She argues that maintenance of this disconnect is ultimately unsustainable both for society and for business. She sets out to show why, and how it is possible to move toward sustainability by accepting the creation of 'spiritual capital' as a parallel goal with building material capital. The basic concepts on which the book rests include: People, society and business form a system made up of interconnected sub-systems. For such a system to be sustainable requires that the elements cooperate in producing a balanced environment that nourishes the whole. They are holistic ... self-organizing, and exploratory. Sustainable capitalism and a sustainable society depend on recognition and nurture of higher motivations: * We need a sense of meaning and values and a sense of fundamental purpose (spiritual intelligence) in order to build the wealth that these can generate (spiritual capital). * People, organizations and cultures that have spiritual capital will be more sustainable because they will have developed qualities that include wider, values-based vision, global concern and compassion, long-term thinking, spontaneity (and hence flexibility), an ability to act from their own deepest convictions, an ability to thrive on diversity, and an ability to learn from and make positive use of adversity. She identifies three forms of wealth and three kinds of associated intelligence: * Material capital, associated with thinking and rational intelligence, the wealth expressed in money; * Social capital, associated with feeling and emotional intelligence, the wealth that makes our communities and organizations function effectively for the common good; * Spiritual capital, associated with being and spiritual intelligence, the wealth contained in our shared meanings, values and ultimate purposes. Much of the book is concerned with identifying the states of being in which a person or an organization can find itself and the principles required for transformation to a state in which higher values can be met and higher needs satisfied and the system remains sustainable. The principles are based on observation of the behavior of (non-human) complex adaptive systems plus principles for human sustainability taken from spiritual thought through the ages. The qualities that the aut

The collaboration of Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, Spiritual Capital: Wealth We Can Live By offers a highly critical view of the business and ethical practices of capitalism as it is practiced today, with its amorality vested in short-term self-interest, reaping profits, obsession with shareholder value, isolationist thinking, and reckless disregard of long-term consquences. Arguing for the need for a radical new philosophy for corporate governance that adjusts the meaning and purpose of wealth creation, and using the principles of "spiritual capital" and "spiritual intelligence" to define the needs of humanity and human government, Spiritual Capital is a passionately presented charge for people to make a difference