Our Conditioned World

Abstract

Consumption is the product of a lifetime of conditioning. Conditioning is very powerful. When our conditioned habits aggregate into organizations, institutions and culture they harden in our minds and become solid, real and immutable stories. For those living inside the stories it's almost impossible to envision a world operating under different rules. In business, we have created stories about market growth, market share, competition, globalization, efficient supply chains, short product life cycles, competition, continuous economic growth, etc.. These are the stories that drive our business paradigms. Our propensity to truck, barter and trade in a world of finite resources is leading to the logical outcome of depleted resources, lives of unsatisfied insatiable accumulation, disastrous poverty for the majority, and devastation of the gifts of our planet. This essay examines how our business paradigms aren't cast in stone but socially constructed artifacts. And that they create a web of conditioning that touches many parts of our lives. Assumptions about the natural environment are buried in our business paradigms of mass production and consumption. We discuss how awareness of our conditioning, briefly using the lens of Buddhist dependent origination, is a first necessary step towards constructive change in business practices.