This article was previously published in One Earth Magazine Volume 5 Issue 3B June 1985

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In the last issue of One Earth, Alex Walker reported on the economics of the Findhorn community ‘s transition to a village. Here he offers a more personal view-an imaginative perspective on both the economic challenges facing today ‘s world and how these challenges are perhaps reflected in the Findhorn Foundation. It is a perspective inspired in part, he says, by David Spangler ‘s ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ‘ in Towards a Planetary Vision.

The purpose of this article is to examine some global thoughts and local actions concerning the more pressing economic challenges of the present day. These challenges seem to come in fours, and in ages past there were the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the form of War, Conquest, Famine and Death. In these troubled times the names may have changed, but there are still four much-feared harbingers of doom which stalk the economic landscape.

In the Third World or South, the four of old are still recognisable. Famine and War remain abroad in these regions of Gaia, and today they are joined by the modernday equivalents of Death and Conquest – the population explosion and crippling debts. The first appears to be a paradox, for it is the abundance of life itself which is causing much suffering and indeed death, but each horseman is in fact the shadow created by an unintegrated light source. Thus is humanity’s uncontrolled desire for life sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Similarly is famine the shadow of greed and over-abundance elsewhere, and war the price of an uneasy peace in the North. Likewise the crippling loan burdens of many poor countries are a latter-day form of economic conquest by the rich and powerful; the shadow of monetary greed that is prevalent in other, apparently more favoured areas of the globe.

The reason that the number four appears so regularly is connected with the basic economic factors of land, labour and capital. Capital comes in two forms, fixed assets such as plant and machinery, and liquid assets or money – hence the four. It is possible to think of the four ‘riders’ as the shadow sides of these prime factors – a connection that becomes more clear when we consider the developed economies.

In the rich North, the Horsemen are the same but come in different guises. Famine is replaced by the problems of environmental degradation and pollution, war by the build-up of military might, population growth by the economic ‘death’ of unemployment, and debt by the similar but more complex economic difficulties of the developed nations, including the threat of a banking collapse caused by Third World loan defaults.

It is worth noting that the major difference between the North and the South is largely in terms of the immediacy of th problems. Famine is now, while the potential effects of acid rain are a threat. War is today for Kampuchea, Ethiopia and Nicaragua, while nuclear holocaust is a Sword of Damocles hanging over us. The poverty of Calcutta and Lima is a scandal today, whereas the most damaging effects of high unemployment rates are projected into the longer-term. Mexico and Brazil must pay the interest on the interest immediately, whilst the economists of the North worry about the potential disasters that confront the stock markets and pension funds.

Such thoughts may not be overly cheerful, but the first step in overcoming our shadows, either as individuals or as a species, must surely be to face them squarely, with understanding and compassion rather than fear. It also has been important to set the scene with some thought concerning the global scale before moving on to discuss the action that may be taken at the local level.

My own local experience has of course been primarily with the Findhorn Foundation itself, and it is to this that we now turn. The four Horsemen still make an appearance here, but with changed and in many ways less threatening costumes. At this scale we are not dealing with the full force of the Horsemen of biblical prophecy, but rather with more familiar and everyday economic problems which are the distant echo of their hooves. The parallels are far from exact, but the difficulties the community has faced and overcome in learning to utilise land, labour and capital assets follow a similar pattern.

One Earth 5-3B The Guises of the Four Horsemen

The Guises of the Four Horsemen

The most obvious is in the form of Debt. The travails of the community under this burden, which reached nearly £500,000 at its height, are well-known. With the purchase of the Caravan Park we now have a clear way of repaying the remaining balance of £350,000, as £50,000 a year of the surplus which accrues from running this business will be allocated to debt reduction until we are completely free of such dues.

The progressive reduction of the debt will achieve two positive ends. Firstly, community funds will become available for productive uses as the interest payments fall and capital repayments become unnecessary. Secondly, the community’s continued magnetism in attracting funds will allow us to make these funds available for like-minded enterprises through an investment fund. The one-time impediment of borrowed sums may in fact become a powerful asset.

So far, so good, but two questions are worth asking. What, in an inner sense, does this debt represent and what is the principle behind our planned integration of this particular rider? The first is easily answered. The debt is surely the remaining unintegrated shadow of our communal inability to take a balanced attitude towards ‘abundance’ – our past failures to match our perceived needs to our actual purchasing power (in more than just the strictly economic sense).

In other words, it is a measure of the extent to which we are still paying today for the acquisitions of yesterday. The more we compensate for this imbalance (and to some extent this process has dominated the recent history of the Foundation), the more the debt will recede. The unity and strength that came with the Caravan Park appeal has allowed us to face the shadow, and now we are embracing it. When the ‘karmic debt’ is paid we can move on.

It is important to note that this challenge was brought under control not simply by facing unpleasant facts. The solution was forged by concentrating on the positive aspects of the community’s ability to fundraise and successfully operate a business, not by sterile opposition to a perceived wrong.

The other riders are hidden more subtly within the economic web we have spun for ourselves. The ghost of unemployment is also on the run, but in the past it has visited the Foundation in the form of under-employment. At maximum there were 315 full members living and working here. Today, 200 are doing almost as much as was accomplished on the physical level by the larger number.

It is true that at times things became somewhat stretched as the workforce declined, but it is a fairly common feature of life that if the pendulum swings too far one way, it must swing a little too far to the other side before coming to rest at the centre.  It is also true that some areas – principally the gardens and maintenance – would probably still benefit from higher levels of person power, but by and large more is accomplished today with fewer people than was the case five to ten years ago.

Part of the reason for this accomplishment is the greater length of stay that members now undertake. In the past, turnover was very much higher and considerable effort was expended in continually re-inventing the wheel. However, another powerful factor is that over the years we have been able to acquire a greater sense of our own group identity, and hence what is required from each one of us as individuals.

This sense has led to a continuing clarity about the desired qualities that the Being that is the Findhom community is likely to seek in its new recruits. The rightness of each individual is still determined by a process of attunement, but if I were tempted to suggest the key requirements I think they would be threefold: first of all, a sense of personal responsibility; secondly, a deep love for all life; and thirdly, a desire to serve.

What then of the remaining two challenges to Findhorn ‘s local economy? In the context of the South, the rider of Famine reflects a lack. In the North he is essentially concerned with waste and this is something that the community in general, and its financial servants in particular, have devoted considerable effort to reducing.

Clearly there is no sense in which the Foundation is, or was, facing imminent ecological disaster, but just as there was once considerable difficulty in organising our personnel effectively, our utilisation of material resources has also received attention.

This has largely taken the form of reducing unnecessary expenditures in three of our largest categories-food, energy and telephones. This process will continue (constant vigilance is required), but the future train of events should involve a more positive approach, including the insulation of bungalows and the replacement of the current stock of residential caravans with more energy-efficient buildings, attempts to grow more of our own food, and other forms of import substitution. Once again, having acknowledged a particular need for change and faced up to our responsibilities, we can take positive steps towards improving our lifestyle whilst, at the same time, living a little more lightly on the planet.

The fourth challenge the community has faced concerns the use of capital assets. Just as many national governments have bitten off more than they can chew in the form of military spending or gigantic hydro-power schemes, for instance, we too have engaged in projects which have demanded more energy than we could comfortably handle.

The most obvious example has been in the shape of the Universal Hall, for the Foundation did spend a number of years putting money and effort into a project that created little by way of return. The trick has been to turn the sword into a ploughshare by finishing the project and releasing its potential. Now that the Hall can be opened to the public this sleeping giant in our midst can begin to waken. In fact, the whole drama has been a lesson in learning to ensure that old projects are completed before new ones commence; and, in a more general sense, it is becoming increasingly apparent that we can only move forward at the same rate as we tidy up the problems created during previous phases of growth.

Two further points need to be made. The first is that at all levels of the economy, the four shadows are deeply intertwined, just as are their counterparts in the light, in the form of land, labour and capital.

For example, the high level of debt made it difficult to contemplate capital expenditure on energy-saving devices or to finish work on the Hall, which in itself had helped create the debt. All three factors were a psychic drain on the community which made creative human problem-solving more difficult. The four are in each circumstance – global, regional or local – facets of an underlying lack of maturity and integration rather than totally separate manifestations of negativity.

Secondly it may be difficult, or impossible, to draw conclusions from the solutions we have found at Findhorn which would be applicable elsewhere. The problems and challenges experienced by other communities of a similar size may be greatly at variance to our own. How much more so at the national or global level? It is probably more important to dwell on the general principle of recognising and embracing the shadows which seem to spring from every side, for the multifaceted economic dilemmas we experience as individuals and nations are not simply going to fade away. Wholeness does not happen by chance, or by grace alone. Indeed, perhaps the most pressing challenge facing our species today – in more than just the economic sense – is our inability not to solve problems but to accept their existence and take action. It is only too wellknown, for instance, that we have the ability to abolish starvation on our planet. What we lack is the will to do so.

But before a growing acceptance of our communal shortcomings overwhelms our individual ability to take positive action, it is worth remembering that we are examining here not only global thoughts, but also local actions. Self-improvement, like charity, begins at home and offers the clearest way to pass through the portals of the Economic Temple of the Divine.