The Spiritual Meaning of the Financial Crisis
Saskia Troy is a business economist, philosopher and spiritual activist that aims to reclaim the philanthropic basis of capitalism. She has been dedicated to developing education and training for learning about sustainable system dynamics within economics. Currently, as the Chapter Leader of Children of the Earth Netherlands she intends to focus on the teaching of sustainability within the Dutch educational system.
According to the vision of Nina Meyerhof, our global systems are in crisis because they are based on individualism and we must see ourselves as a collaborating human family. The goal of Children of the Earth is to teach spirituality, leadership, sustainability and intercultural understanding to children and youth in the world. One would hope that these values would also be part of the core of the international educational system. However, while interviewing ten well-known and politically involved Dutch economists for her Master’s thesis “Greening Wall Street; The Way towards a Sustainable Financial System”, Saskia found that not one of the academic experts she interviewed came up with the idea that the financial crisis could be a spiritual crisis that provides meaning and direction for the future.
Even though most of the academic experts agreed with the fact that the concept of sustainability within education could provide meaning to education as well as being a support in preventing future global financial crises like the past crisis in New York’s Wall Street. According to Saskia, without recognizing the spiritual dimension of holistic and sustainable learning systems it is difficult to say anything positive about the lessons learned for the future – all growth requires spiritual learning. She wants to encourage academic scholars, business economists and students in economics and business to combine sustainable, holistic, dynamic and spiritual learning while staying in connection and never losing touch with their own personal, financial, economic, social and natural environment.