S11 #04 - What is called “profit” disappears without a trace . . . - A thought for the day

The full text of this podcast with all the links mentioned in it can be found in the transcript of this edition, or at the following link:

https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/2025/10/what-is-called-profit-disappears.html 

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Opening Music, "New Heaven", written by Andrew J. Brown and played by Chris Ingham (piano), Paul Higgs (trumpet), Russ Morgan (drums) and Andrew J. Brown (double bass) 

Thanks for listening. Just a reminder that the texts of all these podcasts are available on my blog. You'll also find there a brief biography, info about my career as a musician, & some photography. Feel free to drop by & say hello. Email: caute.brown[at]gmail.com

Transcript

A short “thought for the day” offered to the Cambridge Unitarian Church as part of the Sunday Service of Mindful Meditation

—o0o— 

Saying 2 from Tenkō Nishida-san’s Selflessness 

もうけたと云うようなものは、あとかたもないものです。たゞ汗かいて働いた丈けが消えぬ尊いもうけです。

What is called “profit” disappears without a trace. Only the labour done with the sweat of one’s brow is a noble profit that does not perish.

*  *  *

We live in a culture that is obsessed with the need for economic growth, and in capitalist and finance capitalist economies, economic growth simply cannot happen without profits. This is because profits are the primary driver for capital accumulation, investment, and the expansion of production and sales necessary for capitalism to function and grow. Without profits, so the argument goes, there is no incentive for businesses to create goods and services, and this, in turn, leads to stagnation rather than growth. 

But, as more and more of us are beginning to realise, our shared home—the planet earth—is a finite resource, and it simply cannot sustain our species’ rapacious obsession with infinitely expanding economic growth. The rapidly developing climate emergency bears eloquent and frightening testimony to the truth of this.

This suggests that, whether we like it or not, at some point we’ll simply have no choice but to reframe what we mean by growth and profit if we are to survive as a species. It is such a reframing that Tenkō-san offers us when he says:

What is called “profit” disappears without a trace. Only the labour done with the sweat of one’s brow is a noble profit that does not perish.

In the capitalist and finance capitalist schema, the primary trace left by profit is economic and capital growth, and given what we now know is happening because of the destructive nature of this kind of growth, we might be tempted to reject the connection between them. But, if we redefine the meanings of profit and growth, then something interesting happens, and we can keep a connection between them.   

In Tenkō-san’s thinking, true profit leaves, not precisely no trace, but certainly no traces of the kind that capitalist economists like to measure under terms such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Income (GNI), and which they—and, alas, most of the human species it seems—have come to value so highly. This is because, as you will soon see, for Tenkō-san, true profit is not something that can be measured by GDP and GNI. This is because for him, true profit isn’t about the growth of capital, investments, and the expansion of production and sales, but, instead, about the growth of human wisdom which reveals to us the value of living as simple and as spiritually and intellectually creative a life as possible; that is to say a life of compassionate service to each other that will many times—both figuratively and actually—cause us to break out into a sweat. This kind of living always requires from us effort, and sometimes, considerable effort. As Tenkō-san was well aware, this insight is also found in Jesus teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, where he said: 

“Do not store up treasures for yourself on the earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves dig their way in and steal; rather, store up for yourself treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves neither dig their way in nor steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will also be” (Matthew 6:19, translation by David Bentley Hart, The New Testament: A Translation 2nd ed.).

Now, one of the things an increase in human wisdom is telling us is that continued economic growth of the kind still being encouraged and pursued by our governments and financial and industrial corporations is suicide for us and genocide for all other species, and that we simply have to stop the production of most of the pointless goods and services that now clutter up and litter our life, in fact which clutter up and litter our life all life. In other words, true human growth in wisdom is to learn the need for economic and financial degrowth, and that our true profit will only be found in the hard work of learning to live in much simpler and creatively imaginative ways. 

Only such a shift in our way of being-in-the-world will help us replace our current materialistic values with those that encourage a simpler and more convivial and participatory, cooperative society, a society cognisant of the fact that, as I talked about last week, all things belong to the whole.

So lets continue to reflect on Tenkō-san’s saying this week: 

What is called “profit” disappears without a trace. Only the labour done with the sweat of one’s brow is a noble profit that does not perish.