Is Compassion the Fourth Bottom LIne?

People, Planet and Profit are widely accepted today as the triple bottom line of sustainable business, but is there a fourth, to make a quadruple bottom line?

For Steve Kenney at Toffler Associates, its Perspective:

"Adopting a truly future-focused perspective is the next step in sustainability.  The goal is more than securing present conditions or making amends for missteps — it’s working today to make businesses, communities, and the environment stronger with respect to tomorrow’s conditions.  The key to future sustainability is understanding the forces causing change and taking advantage of them to equip our businesses, communities and ecosystems for the future."

For Yehuda Tagar, founder of the Persephone institute, it's Personal Development:

"The 4th bottom line in monitoring the value of any economic activity is: to what extent does the activity in question provide for the workers who carry it the opportunity for unfolding their human potential in terms of personal growth, on-going learning path, spiritual and social development. It is a call for accountability of workplaces to their obligation to honour their responsibility in claiming the bulk of people life forces, time, intelligence, spirituality and energy – by giving them in return an opportunity to grow as human being while they carry the objectives of the operation they serve."

In People-Centered Economic Development we've considered future perspective in the growth of the Information Age and  due to the influence of Carl Rogers a people-centered approach to economics a matter of giving people access to the resources, information and financial, that they need to resolve their own problems, flourish and grow.  For us, perhaps the Fourth Bottom LIne is best described as ethics, or Principles. - the fundamental predicate that no person is disposable. 

"We are at the very beginning of a new type of society and civilization, the Information Age. Historically, this is only the third distinct age of civilization. We lived in an agricultural age for thousands of years, which gave way to the Industrial Revolution and Industrial Age during the last three hundred years. The Industrial Age is now giving way to the Information Revolution, which is giving rise to the Information Age. Understanding this, it is appropriate to be concerned with the impact this transition is having and will continue to have on the lives of all of us. In that it is a fundamental predicate of "people-centered" economic development that no person is disposable, it follows that close attention be paid to those in the waning Industrial Age who are not equipped and prepared to take active and productive roles in an Information Age. Many, in fact, are scared, angry, and deeply resentful that they are being left out, ignored, effectively disenfranchised, discarded, thrown away as human flotsam in the name of human and social progress. We have only to ask ourselves individually whether or not this is the sort of progress we want, where we accept consciously and intentionally that human progress allows for disposing of other human beings."

, the principles of people-centered economics, it was reasoned that humans are rendered disposable by the manipulation of numbers which allow weath to accumulate in the hands of a minority. The argument is for reciprocity or compassion  - if we consider others disposable we fall into the ethical trap of agreeing that we ourselves are disposable:

"This is a tricky question. Except in the case of self-defense, if for any reason we answer "Yes", regardless of what that reason is, we are in effect agreeing with the proposition of disposing of human beings. Whether disposal be from deprivation or execution, the result is the same for the victim. If we agree that sometimes, for some reasons, it is acceptable and permissible to dispose of human beings, actively or passively, the next question is "Which people?" Of course I will never argue that one of them should be me, though perhaps it should be you. You respond in kind, it cannot be you, but maybe it should be me. Not only can it not be you, it also cannot be your spouse, your children, your mother or father, your friends, your neighbors, but, maybe someone else. Naturally I feel the same way. Maybe we come to an agreement that it shouldn't be either you or me, or our families and friends, that can be disposed of, but perhaps someone else. While we are debating this -- passionately and sincerely, no doubt -- a third party comes along and without warning disposes of the both of us, or our families, or our friends. And there is the trap we have fallen into, because whether or not we approve of our or our families' and friends' demise is irrelevant. It is fair because we accepted the principle of human disposability. We just didn't intend that it be us who are tossed, but if we or our families and friends die, "

Compassion Kills , but he's making the same point as ourselves about the need for long terms sustainable development, microfinance assistance and building local economies. Acting in compassion does not dictate an unreasoning emotional response.   

The Golden Rule of Reciprocity compels us to treat others as we would expect to be treated ourselves

Conversely, In speaking of the Charter for Compassion , religious historian Karen Armstrong implores us to:

“Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.”

The Fourth Bottom Line could be Compassion.  Perhaps it should be the first?

"Growing numbers of people are coming to understand that “them” might equal “me.” Call it compassion, or call it enlightened and increasingly impassioned self-interest. Either way, we are all in this together, and we will each have to decide for ourselves what it means to ignore someone to death, or not."