“Seeing” is the essence of life.
Teilhard de Chardin the famous paleontologist in his classic work “The Phenomenon of Man” says
“SEEING. We might say that the whole of life lies in that verb — if not ultimately at least essentially — To see or to perish is the very condition laid upon everything that makes up the universe….”
What is being referred to is not the physical act of seeing but the metaphysical (beyond the physical) way in which we “See” the whole of life and its constituents.
For instance for a very long time we have ‘seen’ the environment and nature as being separate from us and therefore thought that we could exploit, destroy and use nature the way we wanted to and not be concerned about any backlash being experienced by us. Today we are realising through the bitter experience of climate change that we are deeply connected with nature. In fact if we destroy nature in any way we are ultimately destroying life and ourselves. Our “Seeing” of nature is shifting. However, it still has a long way to traverse.
Similarly for quite some time we have seen business as existing purely for the maximisation of profits. As Milton Friedman the Nobel Prize winner and economist said “The business of business is business”. As a result of this way of “Seeing” business, we have experienced its immense ramifications in a very distressful and existential manner:
The wanton treatment of the environment, the exploitation of cheap labour, the sustained pressure of increasing quarterly earnings and profits resulting in unimaginable stress levels among employees, the resorting to creative accounting to maintain the fictitious revenues and profits as desired, and the immense inequalities of income and opportunities within society.
These are just some of the deleterious effects which have resulted from “Seeing” business existing purely for profits.
Today we are beginning to see business as existing not just for Profits but also for the well- being of People and the Planet (the triple bottom line). The London Stock Exchange in June 2015, was the first exchange globally to launch dedicated green bonds. Besides adopting Green initiatives, companies are also becoming more supportive of employees. They are open to flexi-timings and are piloting 4 day weeks, all with an intention to create a healthy work — life balance. The way we “See” business is changing. But here again we have a long way to go.
As a Society, we have tended to “see” others invariably in an Us vs Them perspective. The basis of this differentiation could be the colour of one’s skin or one’s religion or one’s culture or one’s education or one’s country and so on. We have gained our identity from our differences rather than valued our similarities. This has resulted more often than not in an adamant “We are right; you are wrong” approach to our relationships. In the world of today we are seeing the extreme manifestation of this in the Far Right and Liberal Left divide. We need to shift the way we “See” others.
Others may be different from us and necessarily so. They have a different background, education, culture and so on. Life thrives on diversity. Heterogeneity and multiformity are part of the eco-evolutionary process. But inasmuch as others are different they cannot be separate from us. We are deeply interconnected and interdependent. We share the same life. The richness of the whole of life comes from experiencing difference yet oneness at the same time. When we “see” life in this manner we come to appreciate and respect others rather than discriminate against them. The world exists not in an “Either/Or” exclusion paradigm but rather in a “Both/And” inclusion context.
“SEEING” is the essence of Life.
