Why I don't call it Spiritual Economy anymore

For 15 years I've written about spiritual economy, taking the view that spirit pervades the secular economy also (sales spirit, winning spirit, etc.). Spiritual economy was the inclusive term that satisfied spiritual, religious and secular purposes.

Yet these are three warring camps:

  1. Those who agree with universal spirituality.
  2. Those who follow another religion.
  3. Those who are rational, secular.

An economy has to serve everybody, and we have a tradition of keeping religion out of our common dealings, so that we're rational and secular with each other, and spiritual or religious only in private groups.

An economy labeled "spiritual" carries overtones of oppression, of one group imposing its received truth on everybody. Spiritual economy is just one of many variants of the win-win economy.

It's the win-win economy that is the true inclusive system, serving the secular and religious worlds with generous impartiality. The win-win economy runs just fine on logic and math, and "has no need of that hypothesis" of God or spirit. The central application, volunteer credit systems, is secular, though it may be used by churches.

I'll still keep some writings on spiritual economy around, addressed to camp number one above. Everybody else can just skip them.

Derek Brownlee
03 Mar 1998

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