FROM HOMO RELIGIOUS TO HOMO ECONOMICUS!

Homo Economicus! Economic human typology: The person portrayed in the modern philosophical tradition. This human model appeared for the first time in history in the 17th century and substituted for the “believer” who has been alive until then.

Because at that time, the economy was starting to determine all values, including morality, law, religion, and even God, by rising above every other value, for the first time in history.

By pulling out the term Res Extensa from Descartes’s Res Cogitans / Res Extensa duality, it became possible in the western world to reshape the human imagination and the materialist/mechanical world on the same ground.

The 17th century British philosophical tradition bases knowledge and wisdom on observation with experimentation, and experience with sensation. By doing so, it completely detaches the human mind from its divine foundations. At this point, the human mind is considered as an empty plate from birth on, a tabula rasa as David Locke defined. This view argues that there is no innate knowledge. According to this view, any information that does not come to the individual by experimentation has no value. It further says that the human is a mindful being, yet this mind has no divine basis.

The 17th century philosophical and ideological world, which was shaped by Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, emphasized the human being’s individuality by reducing sociality to a compulsory existence. It basically claimed that society or social life is a contract between individuals that came together only out of necessity and that is it.

Hobbes states that social existence is a necessity for individuals only because “man is the wolf of man!” Those who are equal do not need a deal and since no individual is equal to another, equality is established by this social contract. Due to being intelligent beings, people have to live together. Contract-based societies differ themselves from traditional societies in this aspect!

Because at that time, the economy was starting to determine all values, including morality, law, religion, and even God, by rising above every other value, for the first time in history.

By pulling out the term Res Extensa from Descartes’s Res Cogitans / Res Extensa duality, it became possible in the western world to reshape the human imagination and the materialist/mechanical world on the same ground.

However, according to religion, it is necessary that people live together. The reflection of this divine law of creation onto the community is seen as interdependence and cooperation, from a moral perspective. However, today only the interests are manifested in the contracts, not the cooperation part.

Contracts are established based on mutual interest assurances or conflicts of interests. The divine commandment “you will not steal” is no longer a divine teaching but it rather became a moral and legal obligation to prevent chaos within the society and protect the order, just because it threatens mutual interests.

The transformation that led the economic production to become a form of profit (surplus value), beyond merely satisfying personal and social needs, has made each individual a target value of production and consumption.

In a world that works like a machine, in a society that functions like a machine, in an economy that functions like a machine, in a lifestyle where everything can be calculated and measured; human labor is also considered as a cost that can be calculated mathematically. Our effort has become a simple number. The evanescence of spiritual values in the face of money, a simple symbolic value, has created the scenario and the decor for many terrible human tragedies. The continent of America has been a stage for one of the most brutal and horrifying of these tragedies.

Black people were gathered from the old and consumed continent, and they were not treated with the respect they deserved as human beings that are fundamentally equal to white people. Instead, the ugly colonist mentality considered them to be inferior and treated them as such. It was unfortunately not surprising, as the white superiority ideology considered everyone inferior to a few white men of influence.

Their death voyages began in the dark, stuffy and narrow cellars of the ships traveling to the new continent. Over twelve million Africans were subjected to atrocities of displacement, enslavery and genocide, and those who were fortunate (!) to arrive were forced to work for an endless period until they died from hunger. Children and women were seen as cheap labor and were forced to take their respective places in the production. Families were torn apart, all traditional structures were dissolved and left to decay. Terrible brutality!

When humans were selected as a target value of production and consumption, a new knowledge doctrine emerged: Psychology!

So far, we have seen the escalation of individualism. Family values are lost, individuals are seen as tools that can be used in production, their social needs are simply explained by a need for a societal order and solving conflict of interests... Unsurprisingly, this view that handles and examines human beings as individuals who have no collective needs or bonds, or nature also made psychology become a theory of knowledge.

The human soul is now considered to be ruled by two primary motives: Desire and hate. In relation, the end goal of the human soul study has become learning the desires of a person and determining the ways to make them desire! In its most direct expression, we can say that the aim was to conquer the human soul.

To address the pleasures and indulgences of human beings, the secrets of the psyche had to be conquered. In order to create a world order based on economics and to create Homo Economicus, it was absolutely essential to really know the depths of human psychology. How else would one be able to sell the maximum number of things that the others do not even need, and to make the people consume more than their bodies and souls can handle?

Therefore, the most functional and profitable aid to 18th and 19th- century British expansionism was defined as Psychology.

When economics became a value that has risen above all other values, the importance that is given to education and training has also increased. Everything has begun to be rebuilt according to the economy, even God and all spiritual values!

Within this framework, even God can only exist to the extent that He can contribute to the well-being and interests of humans. Following the secularization of philosophy, religion was rationalized as well, and it started to follow the interests of the sovereign.

With the mental transformation from the understanding of human for God to the understanding of God for human, the institution of philosophy was created and secularized, and soon after that, religion was rationalized in accordance with the interests of the global elite. Education and training have been massified. Now, there was a need to create the demand for the products that were being produced so that they could be sold! People always had demands, but they needed to be reformatted in accordance with the production. People had to be educated, standardized and brought into line for consumption! With the introduction of money as a symbolic value, finance capital, the first virtual (illusive) world is created with the aid of advertisements through media to sell and buy virtual demands.

Contrary to this, the practical sect education taught in religious societies, such as in Sufism or far east traditions, aims that an individual recognizes his/her own truth and achieves development and fully experiences life according to the absolute truth in which s/he takes a part.

Thus, it can be clearly said that the emergence of Homo Economicus is the most significant breaking point in human history because it led to the plundering of all spiritual values and traditions.

This mentality imposes the idea that a life should be lived based on consumption with no limits: We live to earn more and work madly for it. Hobbes’ “man is the wolf of man” statement is justified like a prophecy in the age we live. The whole world is clamped.

That is the exact reason why we have to know the contents and sources of the lifestyle imposed on us. The best way of reaching the source and finding the origin would be through philosophy, as it would constitute the proper authority to be utilized in the same direction. We should get rid of all the negative attributes that we have obtained from the non-religious philosophy of the new age, turn towards philosophy leaving our prejudices aside and we should accept it as an authority that will open our minds and add depth into our intellectual life.

According to Descartes, philosophy is necessary for the civilization of humans and for carrying grace to their soul, which would make them distinguished from animals. He says:

“...It is undoubtedly better for a person to use his own eyes for a guide than to walk blindly after others... Living without philosophy is to live blindly... Only animals are constantly busy, looking for food to feed their bodies, all of the work they do is to protect their bodies... People’s fundamental thinking should seek wisdom, which is the true food of their soul.”

But on the other hand, Descartes also states that: “...It is necessary to believe that the better the members of a nation philosophize, the more civilized and refined that nation will be... Thus, the greatest blessing that can exist in a nation is the presence of real philosophers there.”

Thus, philosophy brings us to one of the most important subjects of existence!