For a new economics, it is necessary an evolution on our conception of the "self", resulting from a shift in consciousness. I call it here relational self. 

 

The relational self challenges the idea of separate “self”, what Alan Watts called the  "skin encapsulated ego" and embraces the notion of interbeing. “Interbeing” (introduced by Thich Nhat Hanh) recognizes the interdependence of any one person or thing to all other people and beings. “To be” is to inter-be" says Thich Nhat Hanh. This young boy is here depicted in an intimate, physical, interbeing, sensorial relationship, with a rock.

 

Growing biosphere and ecological awareness, the popularity of eastern spiritual practices and the effect of new communication technologies such as the internet,  are all contributing to profound transformations on our conceptions of "self" and our experience of it.

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To state "we are all one" has become a mainstream sentence on our daily interaction. But one thing is to understand the concept conceptually, another is to live it. How can we truly have and integrate the experience of merged "oneness"  with our daily lives? How can we find the resources to act, speak and be, operating from that field of awareness?   

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A whole new vocabulary is needed, involving the wisdom of all the different languages

(verbal, non verbal, rational, intuitive).

 

Operating from a notion of "self" as an interbeing, impacts all spheres of the human experience, including traditional notions of economics, which were based on ideas of separation, fostering the supply and demand dynamics and the underlying current model of scarcity of resources and debt.

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A growing awareness of our interconnectedness and the understanding  that our being partakes in the being of everyone and everything else, shapes novel ways to relate to each other in all fields, including the economical one. What you design, designs you back.

 

Argentinian novelist and poet Jorge Luis Borges, wrote once a story about a man:

 

"A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face."

 

As we change, the way we draw the world, and the world itself, changes with along the way.

 

The process though, is messy, and it takes time.