Personal Branding, the Spiritual Way
Spirituality apparently has a new “personal brand” these days — ethics!
Dan Schawbel has an interesting article over on his Personal Branding blog about business ethics, which I think deserves an honorable mention here. His basic take is that business profits should (the dreaded “should” word) never supersede ethical practices in business — and I wholeheartedly agree.
As far as business ethics go, I’m in the old-school crowd — customer first, service first, and the rest falls into place. This is a topic that I feel most of the mainstream “Christian” crowd avoids, in favor of a me-first, God-loves-me-and-not-you, Jesus-loves-you-I-think-you’re-a-jerk mantra.
Spiritually, Jesus had quite a “Zen” approach: simplicity, efficiency, and mutual benefit (aka, “love”) ought to permeate everything we do, from wake to sleep. Unfortunately, “conservatism” has taken on an equality with both “Christianity” and “capitalism” and therefore taken on the dogma of self-service and self-centeredness diametrically opposed with a synonymous “selflessness.” While capitalism in and of itself is harmless and in fact exceptionally beneficial when metered with personal convictions of self-sacrifice and common good, when it’s clouded with self-serving delusion, it takes on the role of societal leech — arguably, the only good argument against capitalism.
Schawbel makes a good point when he says,
Ethics shouldn’t be seen as something apart from the daily life of a business; it is, or should be, integrated into everything a business does.
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2008/12/09 01:23 -0700Z
Your points about capitalism: don’t they also apply to communism?
How would you define Zen? I thought it was a school of Buddhism designed to blast through the mind with suddenness, and not characterised necessarily by the attributes you mention; any more than Christianity is a religion obsessed with a Roman form of public execution.
2008/12/09 06:10 -0700Z
Capitalism is exactly like communism, in the sense that they are both perfect in merit until humans get involved.
Without getting too technical, when I wrote the post (meaning I dug deeper when you posed the question), I was leaning toward the notion that Zen was similar in theory to Taoism — to mean a conscious objection to obsessive rationalization in favor of a simplified existence in the “here and now.”
After poking around on Wikipedia about Zen, I feel sort of validated in that my initial impression of Zen is quite accurate. Zen rejects the “study” of enlightenment toward the goal of simply living on the path.
In that aspect, Christ did the same thing — preaching that loving God and loving our neighbors is the “narrow path” toward living in the kingdom of heaven. Quite a parallel, in any case. It’s also interesting to note that Christ lived 400 years prior to Zen’s foundation as a school of Buddhism.
Since you keep bashing “Christianity,” and I tend to keep agreeing, I’ll say it again: Jesus was never a Christian.
2009/03/15 03:02 -0700Z
Hi nice post, i have come across your site once before when searching for something so i was just wondering something. I love your theme, would it happen to be a free one i can download, or is it a custom one you had made? In a few weeks i will be launching my own site, i’m not great with designs but i really like the style of your site so it would be cool if i could find (or pay for) something with a similar look. :) Thanks!
2009/03/18 06:09 -0700Z
@Evangeline: I built this theme, basically from scratch. If you’re interested, I could certainly take the time to cobble the layout together into something that could plug right into another blog.