Merely Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic? Our Global, Multi-faceted Challenge in Light of a Deep Grammar ESG Approach

Abstract

Our present situation finds us navigating a ship while avoiding at least three treacherous and menacing icebergs. The first is the global environmental crisis we face.  By itself, this iceberg threatens to sink our ship, yet we seem blissfully to voyage along, either completely unaware of the dangers it poses or in complete denial that anything so menacing could possibly be lurking just over the rail of our ship.  The second iceberg is the global pandemic all of us recently experienced.  It is no exaggeration to say that this crisis prompted every government on earth to put its economy into a “coma”.  No one had a way out, nor did we have any idea how long the problem would last, and experts now tell us this will not be our last pandemic.  The third iceberg is the spate of violence and state-sanctioned murders that have been directed toward persons of color, especially toward young black men.  Prejudicial, inequitable arrangements found in state configurations across the globe seem to be baked into our world economic order and—alongside the other two icebergs—these threaten to sink our ship unless we come up with social and economic solutions rather quickly.

            Our present financial and economic order—our ship—seems ill-equipped to navigate these waters.  In this article, I take a rather detailed look at the educational as well as the financial makeup of our ship.  It seems that our vessel needs a radical rebuild, a deep-grammar remodification that requires a rethink of our views on education and of the outsized role high finance plays on our world stage today.  We are in desperate need of a deeply probing realignment, changes helpfully suggested by way of looking at these crises through an “ESG Impact Investing” lens.  ESG approaches offer us deeply insightful environmental, socio-spiritual, and governance/power critiques, provided all three of these factors are deeply appraised and sincerely and holistically considered.