Efficiency continued

It was revealing to search out the dictionary definitions of efficiency.

Oxford concise Science Dictionary: a measure of performance of a machine, engine etc being the ratio of the energy or power it delivers to the energy or power fed to it. In general the efficiency of a machine varies with the conditions under which it operates.

Oxford concise dictionary: state of quality of being efficient: ratio of useful work done to total energy expended or heat taken in; productive of effect (of person) competent, capable; that which makes a thing

The New Elizabethan reference dictionary: causing or producing effects or results; competent, capable; efficient cause: the power or agency producing a thing or event.

Given that efficiency is a foundational value in western societies what is beginning to emerge in this unfolding enquiry is that efficiency has been quietly taken by interest groups and defined in their own specific value based contexts. In economics as in western and now many Eastern societies  it has come to describe material economic growth.

Classical economic theory refers to efficiency as an economic system operating under perfect conditions: perfect information and perfect competition. This has morphed in the 20 th century into the academic theory of efficient market hypothesis that has become a belief system and mantra for many who work in the financial markets, free market think tanks and in politics.  The efficient market theory assumes the market always knows best as it has access to perfect information and therefore knows better than any one individual. This has morphed again into the fashionable theory of the wisdom of crowds with one glaring example of such a “wise crowd” being stock markets.  

I was in one of fmy avourite local bookshops this week and saw the recently published book entitled “Albert Camus -elements of a life” by Robert Zaretsky. Having been deeply drawn to Albert Camus books in my youth I skimmed the book and had to buy it. Camus was to me the French George Orwell – The writings of and about these two giants are worth re visiting on a regular basis. More opens up to me on each reading.

Iris Murdoch wrote “moral improvement is improvement of vision” and this applied to Camus context for life. Camus life was about being this process itself not any end point- always uneasy, “aspiring towards something that transcends the human”, engaging with life despite man’s relationship with the universe creating absurdity and that such absurdity was not an inherent part of the universe itself. Camus said in the Myth of the Sisyphus, ”the absurd depends as much on man as on the world.” He said seeing the absurdity didn’t necessarily result in nihilism- The ability to see the absurdity in this way, requires moral effort. Camus said, “all I can hope to do is to show that generous forms of behavior can be generated without God and that man alone in the universe can create his own values. This is in my opinion the sole problem posed by our era.”

What if we look at efficiency from the Murdoch -Camus perspective: moral improvement which comes from improvement in vision? That can be the first step we human beings can take to become morally and spiritually efficient human beings and therefore create a never endingly efficient evolutionary life creating process. We then understand that the natural relationship to our experience and life is to feel as did Camus, forever uneasy as our main intention is always being interested in improving the vision of the evolving life process itself. We have no sense of the future and yet yearn to be creating the future in very moment. What has struck me from the book on Camus mentioned previously, is that he was awake to the dimension of spirit- initially from his childhood when looking through his window into the night sky. Here in his childhood, he says he discovered two worlds- material poverty (he had a harsh and spare childhood) and spiritual wealth. He was awake to the universe and the man’s relationship to it.

From my experience Andrew Cohen is one of leading edge philosophers and visionary’s of the 21 st century that has provided me with a rational and practical context for making sense of the spiritual dimension and spiritual experiences. His awareness of the deepest reality of self in action (the evolutionary process) and the moral consequences of experiencing that deeper reality of who I am in action (the other face of deepest self being discovered in meditation- self in inaction) provides the context for re defining the concept of everything and in this post, efficiency.

My own conviction is if the human being’s sense of self orientation or centre of gravity moves from a separate material self to a spiritual self that sees itself as the evolutionary process, that would result in not just an efficient human being but consequently an efficient evolutionary process.

Such a human being is evolving in very moment not for themselves( although that is a byproduct) but so that the evolutionary process , the big bang itself , that ultimate source of the YES to life , evolves to higher and higher levels of integration and harmony, forever……

Such a human being is “improving their vision”, at the emotional-psychological, philosophical, spiritual, ethical-moral levels- The Do it yourself steps to evolving more and more as a spiritually efficient human being. The evolutionary economics informed by such a human being becomes unbounded by conditioning, free, exciting, ever new and creative. With such like minded human beings the evolutionary economics emerges co created in real time, forever new and evolving.  

It is fascinating for me in re reading John Maynard Keynes and Fredrick Hayek and essentially reading them with an improved vision that has come from an re awakening of my from childhood spiritual experiences within the  keenly interested and disciplined engagement with  the teachings of Andrew Cohen.

These two intellectual giants Keynes and Hayek, in the evolution of economics,  are viewed by most as at opposite ends of the economic profession in terms of theory and application. Yet I am getting a sense that they shared foundational values and insights. Both admired the 18 th century political philosopher Edmund Burke and from my perspective both were at heart evolutionary economists. That is they both believed that the human condition is forever set within the context of uncertainty and more rather than less freedom is the condition for humanity to evolve. I would add this is the condition of the universe, of which we are the highest  expression.   In responding in a letter to Hayek on his   essay “On the road to serfdom”, the withering destruction of socialism as a societal structure, Keynes was not only in agreement with its moral and philosophical position “but in deeply moved agreement.”

Hayek’s free evolution , the spirit of individual initiative setting the conditions for manifesting in every moment   a “spontaneous order”  and Keynes  uncertainty principle,  ethical foundation  for  goodness in economic action , economics as a moral endevour  all enquired into from an evolutionary spirit perspective makes for  the evolution of an leading edge spiritually efficient economics.  An economics that has the capacity to create economic development within the context of a spiritually efficient perspective that is founded on the truth of an experienced non material reality of self.