The New Idealism – Part 7: The New Idealism, the New Age and Economics

Thursday, 16 April 2026 Written by Michael Dargaville Views: 11773

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Part 7: This is the seventh article from my book called THE NEW IDEALISM that deals with economics and its link to the spiritual New Age movement and a new idealism.

The New Idealism, the New Age and Economics

An area where the New Physics, systems thinking, and the New Idealism intersect powerfully is in the realm of economics and its relationship to the spiritual New Age movement.

The Failure of Fragmented Economics

World famous New Age physicist Fritjof Capra examines the evolution of economic patterns in depth. He says that present-day economics is characterized by the fragmentary and reductionist approach that typifies most social sciences. Economists generally fail to recognize that the economy is merely one aspect of a whole ecological and social fabric — namely, a living system composed of human beings in continual interaction with one another and with their natural resources, most of which are, in turn, living organisms.

Capra says the basic error of the social sciences is to divide this fabric into fragments, assumed to be independent and to be dealt with in separate academic departments. These fragmentary approaches are also reflected in government, in the split between social and economic policies and, especially in the United States, in a maze of congressional committees and subcommittees where these policies are discussed.

Marxist Economics and Its Insights

Capra outlines Marxist economics and points out that Marx recognized that capitalist forms of social organization would speed the process of technological innovation and increase material productivity. Marx was able to see phenomena like monopolies and depressions and to predict that capitalism would foster socialism. He warned that along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages, grows the mass of misery, oppression, degradation and exploitation.

Capra says that today, in the context of our crisis-ridden, corporate-dominated global economy with its mega-risk technologies and its enormous social and ecological costs, this statement has lost none of its power. Critics of Marx often point out that the labour force in the United States — which one would have expected to be the first to organize politically and rise up to create a socialist society — failed to do so because workers received high enough wages to begin identifying with the upward mobility of the middle class. On most measures it was true that American workers had not been continually immiserated but had ridden the escalator of material wealth, although at relatively low levels and with much struggle.

Another important point, says Capra, is that in the late twentieth century the Third World has taken on the role of the proletariat because of the development of multinational corporations, which Marx did not foretell. These multinationals play off workers in one country against those in another, exploiting racism, sexism, and nationalism. Advantages won by American workers are generally to the detriment of those in Third World countries.

Capra points out that Marx emphasized the importance of nature in the social and economic fabric throughout his writings, but it was not the central issue for an activist of his day. Although Marx did not strongly emphasize ecological concerns, his approach could have been used to predict the ecological exploitation that capitalism produced and socialism perpetuated.

The Limitations of Contemporary Economic Thought

Contemporary economics, says Capra, is a mixed bag of concepts, theories, and models stemming from various epochs of economic history. The main schools of thought that have emerged are the Marxist school and “mixed” economics — a modern version of neoclassical economics using more sophisticated mathematical techniques but still based on classical notions. In the late 1930s and the 1940s a new “neoclassical-Keynesian synthesis” was proclaimed, but such a synthesis actually never took place, Capra points out.

Capra says that all the models and theories — Marxist as well as non-Marxist — are still deeply rooted in the Cartesian paradigm, and thus inappropriate to describe today’s closely inter-related and continually changing global economic system. One of the outstanding characteristics of today’s economics in capitalist countries is an obsession with growth. Economic and technological growth are seen as essential by virtually all economists and politicians, although it should be abundantly clear that unlimited expansion in a finite environment can only lead to disaster.

The belief in the necessity of continuing growth is a consequence of over-emphasis on yang values — expansion, self-assertion, competition — and can also be related to the Newtonian notions of absolute, infinite space and time. This is a reflection of linear thinking.

Growth, Ecology, and the Population Crisis

Capra says the world population crisis is a direct problem of the idea of continuing economic growth and that ecological balance could combat this. The problem is that wealth is so badly distributed globally, and much of it is wasted. Five per cent of the world’s population now consumes a third of its resources, with energy consumption per capita about twice as high as in most European countries.

Economic growth, in our culture, is inextricably linked with technological growth. The ultimate manifestation of our obsession with high technology is the widely entertained fantasy that our current problems can be solved by creating artificial habitats in outer space. Technological growth is not only regarded as the ultimate problem solver but is also seen as determining our lifestyles, our social organizations, and our value system. Such “technological determinism” seems to be the consequence of the high status of science in our public life.

The third aspect of undifferentiated growth is the growth of institutions — from companies and corporations to colleges and universities, churches, cities, governments, and nations. One of the most dangerous manifestations of institutional growth today is that of corporations. The largest of them have now transcended national boundaries and have become major actors on the global stage.

Corporate power permeates virtually every facet of public life in the West. They largely control the legislative process, distort information received by the public through the media, and determine, to a significant extent, the functioning of our educational system and the direction of academic research. The nature of large corporations is profoundly inhuman because competition, coercion and exploitation are essential aspects of their activities, all motivated by the desire for infinite expansion.

Corporate Power and the Third World

Capra says that if the consequences of corporate power are harmful in industrialized countries, they are altogether disastrous in the Third World. In those countries, where legal restrictions are often nonexistent or impossible to enforce, the exploitation of people and of their land has reached extreme proportions. With the help of skillful manipulation of the media, emphasizing the “scientific” nature of their enterprises, and often with the full support of the US Government, multinational corporations ruthlessly exploit and extract the Third World’s natural resources.

Toward a Systems View of Economics

The avoidance of social issues in current economic theory, says Capra, is closely related to the striking inability of economists to adopt ecological perspectives. To deal with economic phenomena from an ecological perspective, economists will need to revise their basic concepts in drastic ways. The new economic theories or set of models is likely to involve a systems approach that will integrate biology, psychology, political philosophy, and several other branches of human knowledge, together with economics, into a broad ecological framework.

The New Idealism and a Spiritual Economy

Capra’s outline of how the New Physics could inform economics is certainly interesting. However, this is about the only main area where I do not agree with him totally. I feel that he fails to take into consideration many new post-Marxist views, especially the work undertaken by the Frankfurt School, such as the well-known philosopher Herbert Marcuse as well as the other theorists who have looked at the idealistic side of Marx’s philosophical writings.

The New Idealism — the philosophical notion that mind produces matter, literally — offers a deeper spiritual and consciousness-based foundation for reimagining economics. When consciousness is recognized as the primary creative force, economic systems can be understood not merely as material mechanisms but as reflections of collective thought, values, and awareness. This opens the door to a truly holistic New Age economy rooted in harmony with nature, ecological balance, and spiritual evolution rather than endless material growth and exploitation.

By integrating the insights of systems thinking with the idealistic principle that thought shapes reality, we move toward an economics that honors the interconnected web of life and supports the spiritual awakening of humanity.

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First published in 2002, The New Idealism has appeared in multiple international print editions and is now available in digital format through the author and at CrystalWind.ca.

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