“The first thing that becomes apparent in times like this is how imaginary the economy is. Not imaginary in the sense of fake, necessarily, but in the sense of the way economic realities depend on how reality is imagined. So much of the panic selling of stocks, for example, is based on perception of reality, which then becomes the reality. When billions of dollars of wealth can vanish overnight, it becomes apparent how imaginary wealth is.
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Ethics in the economy depends on character, not calculation. It depends on being a good person, not on “stakeholders” or other utilitarian considerations. The word “ethics” comes from the Greek word for “character,” and such an approach through what humans could aspire to be dominated Western — and for that matter Eastern — thinking for millennia.”
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Maybe the reason that best explains why we understand ethics in a relativist way is that our modern perception of reality is entirely defined in functions of production. Economic science makes whatever falls into its study field relative, because it is grounded in the valuations made by individuals in reference to their circumstantial needs. This is not harmful when applied to merchandise, but when every human act is capitalized, everything is determined as good or bad by consumers. The ideal becomes capital, and goodness becomes what is desirable for the most.
If someone wants to access the goods or services of his choice, he must act according to certain exchange rules of the economic system: ethics is reduced to a certain set of contrived rules that allows individuals to build wealth and to access other goods. Ethics is no longer a spiritual understanding of behavior, but only an implement of the economic system, and thus it subordinates its own authenticity to the dominion of the economy.
Economics studies how we produce and exchange our goods and services, but it invades realms beyond its capacities when it attempts to answer why we produce at all. It circles in a redundant logic where the result is “we produce to consume and we consume to produce”. We think that we can overcome this redundancy with the use of entertainment products and services, but unfortunately, making this material pleasure the teleological goal of the economy leaves man in the evident desperation of our times. Even worse, both socialism and capitalism should produce wealth, services, products and leisure time, but their “ethics” and purposes corrupt and fail because they lack the element that transcends and govern their materiality: Tradition.
How does Tradition make a difference in our understanding of economics? By making economies just production systems rather than all-regulating utilitarian mechanisms, and by maintaining Culture as its goal and putting its ideal over the category of capital. Ethics coming from Tradition regulates our earthly activity, transcending the mundane and its momentary interests. In this ordination, only under the shelter of Tradition, ethics acquires sense when applied to every material aspect.
Truth over economy, in order to not subordinate ethics to the economy. Any ethical code without Truth becomes an exploitable device to those individuals that somehow find a way to violate it. Truth acts in the soul of individuals making them better people, who will find in the mystique of their labor enough satisfaction and strength to not become corrupted. Every persisting goodness in this world grounds in no different fact than this.
Traditionalists do not believe that Truth is that which is convenient, but that Truth is always convenient. We can transcend the redundant hedonism of our current socio-economic system through Tradition by adapting our acts and desires to Truth, not vice-versa.