On September 14, 2013, Tania Singer of Project Syndicate writes an op-ed on NationOfChange.org:
Achieving such an understanding of human nature requires a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach that moves beyond the social sciences. In recent years, developments at the frontier of evolutionary biology, psychology, and anthropology, together with the emergence of new fields, such as neuroeconomics, social and affective neuroscience, and contemplative neuroscience, have shown that humans can be motivated by pro-social preferences, like fairness and concern for others’ welfare or rights.
Institutional reform could be aimed at adapting social environments to foster cooperation instead of competition, and to activate our motivation to engage in caring behavior, rather than seeking achievement, power, and status only. In the long run, striving only for the latter leads to imbalance and resource depletion not only on the individual level, but also globally.
Humans are capable of far more than selfishness and materialism. Indeed, we are capable of building sustainable, equitable, and caring political systems, economies, and societies. Rather than continuing to indulge the most destructive drivers of human behavior, global leaders should work to develop systems that encourage individuals to meet their full socio-emotional and cognitive potentials – and, thus, to create a world in which we all want to live.
Such arguments are supported by the The Just Third Way Master Plan for America’s future, published at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797.
In a letter to the editor published by the Washington Post, CESJ President Norman Kurland challenged the Post‘s assertion that “there is in fact no ‘third way to prosperity’ “. While dismissing the Clinton-Blair version as a welfare-state amalgam of capitalism and socialism, Kurland posed the logical case for a real “third way”:
“On the one hand there is capitalism, an economic system governed by market forces but where economic power is concentrated in the hands of a few who own or control productive capital. On the other hand, socialism, in its many forms, is an economic system governed centrally by a political elite, with even more highly concentrated ownership and economic power. Logically, a ‘third way’ would be a free-market system that economically empowers all individuals and families through direct and effective ownership of the means of production–the best check against the potential for corruption and abuse.”
http://www.nationofchange.org/beyond-homo-economicus-1379168645
