Fourth Bottom Line

A summary of:

Inayatullah, S. (2009) “Spirituality as the Fourth Bottom Line,” Tamkang University, Sunshine Coast University, Queensland University of Technology, Australia, available at: http://www.metafuture.org/Articles/spirituality_bottom_line.htm, accessed 25^th January 2011.

Given that one of the major tasks in my research is defining the term ‘spiritual’, it is useful to compare my evolving definition with other people’s definitions. Inayatullah breaks it down into 4 separate but interrelated factors:

“1. A relationship with the transcendent, generally seen as both immanent and transcendental. This relationship is focused on trust, surrender and for Sufis, submission. 2. A practice, either regular meditation or some type of prayer (but not prayer where the goal is to ask for particular products or for the train to come quicker). 3. A physical practice to transform or harmonize the body - yoga, tai chi, chi kung, and other similar practices. 4. Social – a relationship with the community, global, or local, a caring for others. This differs from a debate on whose God, or who is true and who is false, to an epistemology of depth and shallow with openness and inclusion toward others.”

It’s strange how differently people can understand the same word. I don’t see the first point as relevant, at least in the sense I think he intends it. I do think transcendence is a crucial component of spirituality, but it is in the hope for salvation/liberation that this is vital to my mission (see previous post); I don’t see how trust or submission factors into this, except if it is to mean that we trust our fate, as it were, to deliver us toward salvation/liberation.

Secondly and thirdly, I have purposely avoided including “practice” in my definition of spirituality. This is not because I don’t think it’s important, but I think that once we talk about practice we begin to blur the boundaries between ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’. And anyway, spiritual practice is a personal matter, and I don’t think it is up to us to meddle in others’ practice by making it a design aim. (Nevermind the fact that externally imposed practice would be resisted and probably ignored.) I have asked myself whether technology should at least be an aid to spiritual practice, e.g. whether the role of ‘spiritual technology’ could be to create the “silence” necessary for meditation. Inarguably, technology is in conflict with “‘inner stillness’ of spiritual life”, as Muller et al. (2001) rightly pointed out. But the solution to ‘inner stillness’ is not – and should not be – a technological one. Why create a technological solution to a problem that essentially prescribes disengagement from technology? Why not turn off your computer and take a walk in the woods if you want stillness and contemplation? How odd it would be if in order to meditate one had to get ‘plugged in’, as it were, to a laptop! And consider the absurd design implications if our goal is to facilitate silence: we would have to strip back all functionality until we were left with nothing but rocks and sticks; indeed to the point that we would no longer recognize it as technology at all.

The final factor, though, is closely aligned with my own definition – a kind of community orientation (egolessness), being a good person, doing unto others as one would do unto oneself; do no harm (to others or environment).

The point of Inayatullah’s paper is that discussions about sustainability tend to boil down to practical discussions about Bottom Lines. Firstly, this shows that what people value in this discussion – above the ideological arguments – is “measurability and profit”. Secondly, though not surprisingly given this, the bottom line that is always neglected in these discussions is The Spiritual.

What’s odd about this paper is that the author then spends to much time trying to identify ways of measuring spiritual impacts that you could then placate these Bottom Liners with: “for spirituality to become associated with the quadruple bottom line, the bottom line will be finding measures. Measuring the immeasurable will not be an easy task.” He mentions the case of Bhutan, which has developed a gross happiness index. He also quotes: “In the UK, the Cabinet Office has held a string of seminars on life satisfaction ... [publishing] a paper recommending policies that might increase the nation’s happiness (wwww.number-10.gov.uk/su/ls/paper.pdf). These include quality of life indicators when making decisions about health and education, and finding an alternative to gross domestic product as a measure of how well the country is doing – one that reflects happiness as well as welfare, education and human rights.”

Happiness is something that we have some idea of how to measure. But then happiness is subjective, as was the main objection to the teaching of happiness presented on the Moral Maze (19 January 2011, available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00xhj84/Moral_Maze_19_01_2011/). Professor Layard, of the London School of Economics made this controversial remark: “Oh well that’s a different point, and the first point is whether the subjective is the most important thing in life, and it seems to be perfectly obvious that it is. [Really?] Actually, our experience, as we experience it, is the most important thing.” What I love about this statement is that it perfectly embodies Heelas et al.’s Subjectivization Thesis.

I think the point is, and Inayatullah finally gets around to it: “more measurement burdens should not be the purpose of a fourth bottom line. It must be deeper than that.” But to some extent this glosses over the difficult problem that anyone trying to promote design aims with non-measurable outcomes is that this does not appeal to our contemporary notions of meaning. Similarly, when I am talking about designing spiritual technology, not only will it be hard to measure the inherent ‘spirituality’ of this technology (or its alternative); but more importantly, it could not be conventionally successful. In other words, technology that fits our current worldview and/or appeals to our base instincts, tends to sell. Technology that attempts to shift our worldview, and asks us to rise above our base instincts, is probably less likely to sell. What this means for my project is that part of it must involve articulating new metrics of success. Not how well it sells. But qualitative change over a century of use, perhaps?

The good news is that Inayatullah claims that the interest in spirituality is growing: “As anecdotal personal experience, workshop after workshop (in Croatia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Australia, Thailand, Germany, Taiwan, New Zealand, Hawaii, for example) the spiritual future comes out as desirable. It is generally constructed as having the following characteristics. 1. Individual spirituality. 2. Gender partnership or cooperation. 3. Strong ecological communities. 4. Technology embedded in society but not as the driver. 5. Economic alternatives to capitalism. 6. Global governance.” And even more excitingly, the author reports: “the spiritual (gaian) vision of the future confirms the qualitative and quantitative research work of Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson. They document a new phenomena, the rise of the cultural creatives. This new group of people challenge the modernist interpretation of the world (nation-state centric, technology and progress will solve the day, environment is important but security more so) and the traditional view of the world (strong patriarchy, strong religion, and strong culture, agriculture based and derived). Ray and Anderson go so far as to say that up to 25% of those in OECD nations now subscribe to the spiritual/eco/gender partnership/global governance/alternative to capitalism position (www.culturalcreatives.org). However, they clearly state that cultural creatives do not associate themselves a a political or social movement. Indeed, they represent a paradigm change, a change in values.”

And finally: “It is this change in values that Oliver Markley, Willis Harmon and Duane Elgin and others have been spearheading (www.owmarkley.org). They have argued that we are in between images. The traditional image of “man” as economic worker (the modernist image) has reached a point of fatigue, materialism is being questioned. Internal contradictions (breakdown of family, life style diseases) and external contradictions (biodiversity loss, global warming) and systemic contradictions (global poverty) lead to the conclusion that the system cannot maintain its legitimacy. The problem, especially for the rich nations, has become a hunger for meaning and a desire for the experience of bliss.”

There may be hope afterall.