Ursinus Intro Ethics Blog - Section A

Imagine business driven by "matters of the heart" as Xiusheng Liu puts it. Not egocentric values, work for work's sake, or action motivated by pure profit. Rather business for the purpose of providing a comfortable living, advancing a passion, or bettering people's lives. It sounds pretty idealistic, but why not?

Ok, so there are many reasons why in practice this would not be feasible – namely the natural greed that some believe is part of human nature – but we're talking about the Hindu viewpoint. "The quality of the subject is of primary importance," Liu says. If this is so, the entailment (as it appears to me) would be that human beings would cease being viewed as commodities. That is, instead of people being a means to an end (profit), they would be the end. One would be free to "cultivate the spirit of offering both the work and its fruits to the Master Worker." Now, I'm not calling upon one to accept Vedantic doctrine, but replace Master Worker with "higher good" or "spiritual fulfillment," and it approves likewise. Why should we desire to be more than what we need to live comfortably? Why should we pursue business ends for egocentric goals rather than idealistic ones? We could all use a little more idealism.

I would like this to be a discussion starter for people to think about some more real-world problems of Spirinomics versus Western business practices. What are the biggest obstacles?