---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Great Transition Network <[email protected]> Date: Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 3:08 AM Subject: The Church of Economism and Its Discontents (GTN Discussion) To: [email protected]

From Herman Daly <[email protected]>

------------------------------------------------------- Thanks to Richard Norgaard for an insightful and provocative essay. I would just like to add a reference of likely interest to others, and to raise a question regarding the puzzling quote from Frank Knight. It is becoming more usual nowadays to analyze various fields of thought “as a religion.” Sometimes this is just a rhetorical ploy to discredit a field of thought in the eyes of secular post-modernists who consider all religion as fantasy or lunacy. But other scholars develop logically well-founded and instructive parallels, as is the case with Norgaard’s essay. Another economist who has cogently and extensively developed this line of thought regarding economics is my former colleague, Robert H. Nelson (see his Economics as Religion, and The New Holy Wars (Economic Religion vs. Environmental Religion). Also, I recently learned that there is an emerging field devoted to this kind of study, with its own Journal of Implicit Religion. The occurrence of implicit religion is by no means limited to economics, but can equally be found in other fields, including biology and ecology. Regarding the puzzling quote from Knight: “To inquire into the ultimates behind accepted group values is obscene and sacrilegious: objective inquiry is an attempt to uncover the nakedness of man, his soul as well as his body, his deeds, his culture, and his very gods. Certainly the large general [economics] courses should be prevented from raising any question about objectivity, but should assume the objectivity of the slogans they inculcate, as a sacred feature of the system.” I found this obscure and submit for discussion my attempt to interpret it: namely that Knight has assumed that “ultimates” are either unreal or destructive, and therefore any objective inquiry into their nature would only undercut, the ““principles” by which a society or a group lives in tolerable harmony.” This, of course, is implicit religion from Knight—the metaphysical proposition that there probably are no objective values, and even if there are, we are better off not inquiring about them. The social goal of “tolerable harmony” justifies our conventional economic ideology, which cannot withstand objective questioning. Alternatively, Nelson suggests that Knight was less a cynical pragmatist than a secular Calvinist who believed that original sin renders natural man incapable of achieving objective goodness even if it exists. However, that original sin would not also preclude attainment of pseudo-ultimate free market values seems to have been assumed as well by Knight. Perhaps Knight’s hope was that market principles, although flawed as he recognized, would allow a society in which people, though unable to perceive or agree on the objective authority of the ultimate good, could nevertheless exist in “tolerable harmony”. The “explicit religion” of Christianity (including Calvinism) affirms that ultimate value really does exist, and that by divine grace man may, albeit with error, recognize it, and respond to its lure. However, in fairness to Knight, who was not a Christian, one must admit that, from the perspective of today’s politics, “tolerable harmony” looks pretty good. --Herman Daly ************************************************************************ Friday, October 30, 2015

From Paul Raskin <[email protected]>

----- GTN Friends: I write to launch our NOVEMBER DISCUSSION, which will consider Richard Norgaard’s new GTI essay, “The Church of Economism and Its Discontents.” Please read it at www.greattransition.org/publication/the-church-of-economism-and-its-discontents, and consider commenting. Is orthodox economics akin to a secular religion? Are we living in the “Econocene”? Is there a way out? Norgaard, a founder of ecological economics, argues yes, yes, and maybe. In so doing, he guides us further into the terrain of alternative economics we’ve explored recently in our discussions of GTI pieces by Herman Daly, Giorgos Kallis, Peter Barnes, and John Bellamy Foster. I wonder, though: * Is economism still a monolithic ideology? Or are critical currents within the economics mainstream increasingly questioning its reductionist framework and false predictions? * As a framing for our contemporary condition, is “the Econocene” a useful corrective to the geologic emphasis of “the Anthropocene”? How do these compare to GTI’s term, “The Planetary Phase of Civilization,” which aims to convey the multi-dimensionality of the globalizing social-ecological system? I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts on these and other issues raised by Norgaard’s stimulating essay. Comments are welcome through NOVEMBER 30. Looking forward, Paul Raskin GTI Director NOTE ON GTI’S PUBLICATION CYCLE: GTN discussions occur in ODD-NUMBERED months, and GTI publishes in EVEN-NUMBERED months. Each discussion takes up a new essay or viewpoint prior to its publication. After the discussion closes, GTI publishes the piece, edited comments from the discussion, and a response from the author (along with other new articles). You can review all GTN discussions at www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-forum. ------------------------------------------------------- Hit reply to post a message Or see thread and reply online at http://www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/171-the-church-of-econo... Need help? Email [email protected] -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/