Jean-Sébastien Simon, Lecturer in Sustainability at ESSEC Business School and Consultant in Conscious Business completes a series of eight features on how the Triple Bottom Line can serve as a basis for new business approaches that go beyond CSR towards more Conscious Business.  

Conscious Business: The importance of both Inner and Outer Progress by Jean-Sébastien Simon.

Progress as a foundational driver of the modern world

Progress, as explained by philosophers from the Western Enlightenment period such as Immanuel Kant, G.W. F. Hegel, or Karl Marx, is a key component of the whole paradigm underlying business.

Looking East, it is epitomized by the Japanese concept of Kaizen, where businesses strive to achieve ever-better performance through the continuous improvement of their products, services, financial performance, and processes.

In the contemporary world, progress is usually seen as material progress through the use of innovations, research, and development. The whole Western world and civilization have been based on the premise that by developing better tools, humanity would thrive and create a better situation for itself. While this has been partly true (the use of electric stoves is much more effective in urban areas than that of firewood), our addiction to material progress has also led us to the tremendous damage to society and the environment we know today as well as bringing us to the edge of our own survival as a species on earth.

Progress is multifaceted

In the context of Conscious Business, four directions of progress that seem necessary for humanity to thrive in balance can be grouped in two distinct continuums:

1. Tapping both into High Tech and Low Tech Progress
2. Developing Inner Progress at least at the same pace as Outer Progress.

Limitations of Material Progress

“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backward.” Aldous Huxley

Let’s take the example of a ubiquitous invention: modern cars. While cars have brought tremendous speed and possibilities to humanity that were impossible before their use worldwide, they have also caused the death of an estimated 60-80 million people since their invention.  

The more low-tech option of bicycles on the other hand brings about a healthier physical condition for users, zero pollution during use, and is one of the inventions that has never been used for damaging human lives or the environment.

The controversial use of Artificial Intelligence is also at the core of human material development today, with the risks of creating more division in humanity, and the risks of these forms of intelligence “taking over” or “turning against” humanity as we have witnessed in so many science fiction movies. Some alternatives could be the development of “Artificial General Wisdom” instead of a mere Artificial General Intelligence, where the developers would build in compassion, loving-kindness, discernment, and other wisdom-related qualities.

This requires the engineers creating these forms of intelligence to not only understand but also embody these forms of wisdom. As an example, the pioneering project of Loving A.I. has been initiated by A.I. specialist and roboticist Ben Goertzel, Dr Eddie Monroe, Dr Julia Mossbridge, and their team to move in that direction.

High Tech and Low Tech

The High Tech / Low Tech dichotomy is epitomized in the urban legend of NASA investing millions of dollars to develop an “anti-gravity pen” to be used by astronauts in space, as they noticed that standard fountain pens couldn’t write without gravity (the ink wouldn’t flow down).

The Soviets, not having the same R&D budget as NASA, used pencils for their cosmonauts… Although the story needs to be straightened out (it was actually a private company that developed the pen and sold it first to NASA and later to the Soviet Union), it does illustrate the limitations of bureaucracy and the concept of frugal innovation: the capacity to use low-cost, simple and existing resources and solutions to tackle issues and innovate.

Frugal innovation (Jugaad in Hindi) can be very helpful when resources are scarce, whether in organizations, economies, or natural environments. Examples of Frugal Innovation, include Mansukh Prajapati’s clay-made fridge which keeps food fresh for several days without the use of any electricity, or the use of bicycles to charge cell phones in some African countries.

On the opposite side of the spectrum lies High Tech and Deep including technologies such as advanced materials, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (M.L.), biotechnology, advanced energy production, quantum computing, blockchain, robotics, aerospace technologies, photonics…

In the field of planet regeneration, for instance, a High Tech solution that is being developed is Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). This technology allows to capture CO² from the atmosphere using a building that resembles a power plant or manufacturing building. While this technology is still in its early stages of development, the costs remain high: between $15-$342 per ton of CO² captured.

On the other side of the spectrum, tree planting is a very low-tech solution, in addition to being a natural one, with a very low cost: around $5 per ton of CO² captured. Indeed, Tropical Forest restoration has been identified as one of the top 5 solutions to reverse climate change by Paul Hawken and his team of researchers in their remarkable work on Project Drawdown.

Inner Progress and Outer Progress

“Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.” R. Buckminster Fuller

When it comes to inner progress versus outer progress, we can say that today humanity is relatively advanced in terms of outer progress. I say relatively if we compare to where we were two hundred thousand years ago when humans came up with the idea of creating a bed for the first time. However, if we compare it to where highly technologically advanced civilizations could be, humanity is still struggling in the Stone Age. Indeed, building on the work of Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev, astrophysicists came up with a scale to describe the technological advance of a civilization that goes from Type I to Type V.

A Type I civilization can harness all the energy that is available from a neighboring star, gathering and storing it to meet the energy demands of its growing population.  To reach this stage, humanity would need to increase its energy production by a factor of one hundred thousand times. Research has estimated humanity to be currently a Type 0.7276 civilization on the Kardashev scale, and could reach Type 0.7449 by 2060. We have not even reached the Type I civilization. I am mentioning this stage as a reminder of humility when it comes to our “technological advancement”, and as a word of caution when we see what we have done to our planet, our fellow human beings, and other species, with the limited technologies we already have…

What kind of destruction would our species engage in if we were more technologically advanced, without having developed the inner qualities to use technology consciously? Examples of destructive behaviors can be found in science fiction movies, from Dune to Star Wars where highly evolved technologies are used for destructive purposes, and where these highly destructive technologies are used by individuals and groups with a medieval or imperial consciousness. In a way, we are still apes with guns…

It seems that where humanity needs to make the most progress is inwardly, in its psychological and spiritual maturation.

Gus Speth, a former Administrator of the UNDP put it in these terms: “I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. I thought that with thirty years of good science, we could address those problems. But I was wrong.

The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy. And to deal with those, we need a spiritual and cultural transformation.”

What humanity and thus, business and political leaders need to develop as qualities are those of wisdom, compassion, discernment, loving-kindness and thus various forms of emotional, moral, aesthetic and spiritual intelligences in addition to enhancing cognitive intelligence and technical skills. Once these qualities are developed, they can be built into the technologies we create, thus removing the biases and imperfections of the human mind. Could we build technologies with heart?

Could we become wise enough to sense which technologies would be really helpful for humanity, other species, and our planet as a whole rather than creating more gadgets, a lot of which barely serve superficial wants and desires?

Nowadays, most current industrialized civilizations rely on outer technologies to satisfy individual and collective needs. Let’s take three examples:

First, the need for feeling physical warmth: When we feel cold, we put on a wool jacket or turn on the heat (thereby using up energy requiring resources and causing pollution for most of them).

“Inner Technologies” have been developed to create internal heating capacities as demonstrated in the Wim Hof Method. This Method combines cold exposure, breathing techniques, and meditation). Through the wilful regulation of the sympathetic nervous system, these techniques allow one not only to increase body temperature but also to increase one’s sense of well-being and boost the immune system. This example shows that human beings can solve some of their needs through internal means.

Another example is the need for social connection and belonging. Nowadays when we feel lonely, we turn to social media for instant connection. We are well aware of how social media overstimulates the nervous system, by flooding the system with dopamine, the neurotransmitter responsible for instant pleasure and gratification. When this happens too often, the marginal effects of dopamine decrease and one needs a higher dose to feel the same levels of well-being, which can lead to addiction.

Inner progress can allow us to be with our feelings, no matter how unpleasant they first seem, let them pass (they are impermanent), and return to our natural state of well-being by letting go of our thoughts. It can also allow us to make a connection with the place we are, by getting curious about our surroundings, or start a conversation with the person right next to us which can produce well-being without the addictive qualities of social media.

A third example is the need for new and varied experiences. Humans travel evermore by car, bus, train, boat or plane, thereby causing tremendous pollution and endangering our very survival on this planet.

The current external progress has led us to research and try to develop hydrogen-based aircraft. A recent test flight powered by a hydrogen engine operated by ZeroAvia was successful and Airbus engineering teams are hoping to see larger commercial hydrogen-fuelled/zero CO² emission flights take off as “early” as 2035 – that is fifteen years before the aviation industry intends to become fully carbon neutral. In the US, a small 5-seat aircraft called Alaka’i is on its way too. 

That will be another step of progress in the outer tech. Even then, hydrogen is a technology that requires a lot of electricity input to be produced. It might save CO² emissions downstream (0 CO² emissions compared to CO² emitting engines), but if the energy to produce the hydrogen is not produced through renewable energies (called “Green Hydrogen”), it doesn’t solve the problem completely. Indeed, 95% of current hydrogen is produced by carbon-emitting processes, thus being called “grey hydrogen”.  Even with Green Hydrogen, the efficiency is quite low: 30% efficiency for hydrogen to be carried by cars, which means that 70% of the electricity used to create the hydrogen is lost for only 30% of the output. This shows the limitations of outer progress.

Yet, when we look at the other side of things, instead of looking outward for solutions, and turn our attention inwards, we can foster the development of inner progress. Indeed, people who engage in more introspective practices such as mindfulness, Yoga, Qi-Gong, active imagination (as described by Carl Jung), creative activities, even sports and other forms of well-being could inquire into their need to travel and discern whether it is relevant or not, understand their needs at a deeper level, and sometimes renounce some travels altogether, or not experience the need to travel as much, or even practice slow travel.

I am not suggesting that we return to caves and relinquish technology altogether, but rather that by rebalancing the Inner and the Outer, the High Tech and the Low Tech, we can develop the right technologies and use them in the right way, thus creating a better world for all to thrive.

As shapers of the world we live in, Business Leaders engaging in Conscious Business with inner progress could make decisions that would seem completely counter-intuitive to conventional business leaders. For instance, during a recent private conversation, a Senior Partner from an ESG consulting firm told me that he had not taken a plane in the last several years, despite having clients all over the world. He quipped, humbly:

“I am sure that if I spent two weeks in Silicon Valley to meet my clients, I could double our revenue. But I don’t want to. It would be bad for our carbon footprint and for my well-being, I’ve spent enough time on planes in my career.”

This humility and wisdom is an exemplar of the need for business leaders to cultivate inner progress at least (if not more) than outer progress.

To finish, I would like to quote H.H. The Dalai Lama who summarised this point elegantly:

“We have bigger houses

But smaller families;

More conveniences,

But less time;

We have more degrees,

But less sense;

More knowledge,

But less judgement;

More experts, but more problems;

More medicines, but less healthiness;

We’ve been all the way to the moon and back,

But have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbour.

We built more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever,

But have less communication;

We have become long on quantity,

But short on quality.

These are times of fast foods but slow digestion;

Tall man but short character,

Steep profits but shallow relationships.

It’s a time when there is much in the window,

But nothing in the room.”

H.H. The 14^th Dalai Lama, The Paradox of our Age.

My hope is that humanity regains balance and harmony by growing in psychological maturity to match at least the level of technologies it has developed so far.

For a list of sources used in this article, click here.

Useful links:

• Link up with Jean-Sébastien Simon via LinkedIn
• Read a related article: The 7 Ps of Conscious Business
• Discover ESSEC Business School
• Apply for the ESSEC Global MBA.

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