The theme of this conference is “Accelerating Sustainability in Business”. But what is a theologian doing at a business conference? I do not know much about money — neither to produce it nor to count it. So I leave the details of economic theory to our keynote speaker, the dean of Adamson Business School.
The nearest experience I have of business is helping my mother in her sari-sari store. I do not know whether it was sustainable or not. Her experience, for sure — and the experience of many people like her — would hardly make it to this big conference. But they are the people that I know. People trying to make both ends meet. I think it should be from them that we should learn about sustainability.
My professional background is in philosophy, sociology, and theology. These are sciences where people matter. And in order for business to be sustainable, in order for our world to survive, we should go back to where our people are. We should go back to the rough grounds where they live.
My favorite philosopher is the British thinker, Ludwig Wittgenstein. His writing is laconic and difficult to understand. But there was one sentence that struck me and has influenced me in my whole professional career. He writes:
“We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense, the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so, we need friction. Back to the rough ground!”
He was talking about mathematics which is considered an exact science by many. Once you know the formula, people think that have solved all the problems. Not true, he said. Most often, our scientific formulas do not fit reality; they are not applicable on the ground; they fly up in the air.
Our theoretical world is like walking on ice without friction. We actually can’t walk on ice; we slide. If we want to walk, we need friction. So back to the rough grounds where people are. They tell us which of our science works, which does not.
So let me go back to the small village store of my parents. I do not like to romanticize it nor propose it to be a model of any corporation today. But it is from here that I begin to learn about sustainability. There are two things I learned from there: profit over people, ethics over technology.
1. People over Profit
When I was growing up, I already know about my parents’ small sari-sari store. All our neighbors would come and get their daily needs from there — from sardines to noodles, from rice to coconut wine. It was a small business and it did not grow very big.
Was it sustainable? I do not think it will pass through the present business school standards. But what I know is that it lasted her and my father’s whole lifetime. Moreover, it helped sustain our big family — helping the meager teacher’s salary of my father. And today, my younger brother and my sister still continues its operation because people in our village rely on it still.
I once asked my father, why he did not expand? Why he was so lenient on people? How can his business grow when he keeps extending credit? Why not gain more profit?
He looked at me and said: “How can you do that when the people who come here are hungry? How can your conscience prefer profit over hungry stomachs?” My parents were not economists but they know how to be sustainable. We did not become rich. But our community survived hard times.
Present global capitalist economy is not sustainable because it prefers profit over people. In the words of Pope Francis, “it is an economy that kills”. The dominant capitalist model [also called the “trickle down economy”] says that after business has earned some profit, the so-called “blessings of capital” would trickle it down to the rest of the population. No. This is not happening.
According to the 2023 edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, between 691 and 783 million people faced hunger in 2022, representing an increase of 122 million people compared to 2019. That is why the first SDG is “Zero Hunger”.
My father’s question was right: “How can you prefer profit over hungry stomachs?” He was not an economist but he knows how to be truly sustainable.
2. Ethics over Technology
Of course, I do not want to go back to the village of my childhood without electricity, without running water or no phone lines. Development is also another name of progress. But how can development be sustainable? That is the main question.
Manila, where our university is located, appears to be quite developed with its skyscrapers and all — but it is not holding classes this week until who knows when. The reason? We are in extreme heat situation — 48-50% C.
We now do business in the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” — a term coined by Klaus Schwab, the Founder of the World Economic Forum. We have gone far beyond the first industrial revolution in the invention of the steam engine, or the second industrial revolution in the coming of electricity and mass production, or the third industrial revolution in the coming of electronics and automation.
The fourth industrial revolution (4IR) is the world of nanotechnology and robotics, of cloud and AI, of drones and self-driving cars. This is a totally different world.
With these developments, business, corporations and companies can grow in speed, scope and scale. But how sustainable are these? Then, I am back to my father’s question: the importance of people over development; the importance of ethics over technology.
Robots can make work easier but they can also make people redundant and unemployed. Drones can deliver medicines to faraway places but they can also drop bombs as they do now in Ukraine in Gaza. At best, the fourth industrial revolution is morally ambivalent.
My point is simple — be it in business or in engineering, be it in science or in politics, be it in education or religion, the human person and his/her planet should be placed at the center. Otherwise, it would be unsustainable.
This is the meaning of all 17 SDGs. The center of the SDGs is ethics.
a. How shall our businesses curb hunger and not bring famine as they do when they hoard goods to keep prices up?
b. How can big medical companies make medicine accessible to all not only to some few?
c. How can workplaces promote gender equality and not discriminate women and LGBTQ?
d. How can multinational mining companies protect the environment and not indiscriminately level down mountains and drive indigenous peoples out of their abode?
These are just some of the questions the SDGs asks the business community.
The 1987 Report of the UN Commission on Environment and Development or the Brundlant Commission defines sustainable development as follows: it is a development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. As the Native Indians love to say: “We do not inherit the earth from our parents. We borrow it from our children.”
Then, I am back to my parents’ small store. My mother answered my question in another way: “We do not have to have much. We should not have much. We only need to have ENOUGH.”
This philosophy of “enough” — in Filipino “sapat” — in Malay “cukup” — is what makes life sustainable.
If we can only read the best of economic theories from this perspective, if we can only teach our students the same, if we can only make it the spirit of our research projects and our dealings with one another, then the earth would be sustainable.
Then, we can offer back to future generations a sustainable world we have borrowed from our children.
The author delivered this speech during a business conference in Manila.
Father Daniel Franklin Pilario, C.M., is the President of Adamson University in Manila. He is a theologian, professor, and pastor of an urban poor community on the outskirts of the Philippine capital. He is also Vincentian Chair for Social Justice at St. John’s University in New York.
