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View all search resultsTechnology and spirituality: Friends or foes?
Scientific and spiritual values should work in harmony, not in opposition.
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Peace of mind: Women practice aerial yoga on July 19, 2025 during a session at a gym for women in Banda Aceh, Aceh.
(AFP/Chaideer Mahyuddin)
O
ne of the most widely read management journals is surely the Harvard Business Review. It is primarily targeted toward top business executives trying to manage their work force as effectively and efficiently as possible. They are keen on finding the latest “gimmicks” to increase productivity.
However, recent articles have focused on an area not normally the focus of organizational management: spirituality in the workplace. These articles have had more of a spiritual direction dimension than a human resource management one. Recent titles include topics such as “How power corrupts”, “The destructive nature of promoting busyness in an organization”, “Why workers are still lonely at work” and “How to help grieving colleagues”.
Such a trend is in keeping with the global pandemic in mental health. The COVID-19 virus has now been replaced by the greed and hunger for power virus. Greed: The Fatal Disease is the title of a Deutsche Welle-produced documentary film. The traditional cure for mental illness was considered to be psychotherapy based on the works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. This is portrayed in the film Dangerous Method. Western secular society is a vivid proof of its failure to cure.
What then is the solution? There is a need to change approaches. The quantitative approach to management emphasizes an obsession with objective measurements. A more qualitative approach urges more attention to intangibles. It uses the tools of ancient wisdom, not just artificial intelligence (AI). These practices come from diverse spiritual sources such as Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam.
Character formation, virtue ethics and the ethics of care are now considered to be complementary to technical skill training. Broader measures of success are used. In addition to statistical data about material results, there are also qualitative data about intangible results. For many nations, the Happiness Index has been used alongside the standard measures of GDP, economic growth and material wealth creation. Progress is best measured in terms of quality of life and the civilizations created.
The 70th anniversary of the Asia Africa Conference in Bandung this year has reminded us that colonialism placed too much emphasis on material wealth. It neglected, and even disdained, cultural and spiritual values developed in traditional Asian and African societies.
Mother Theresa of Calcutta pointed out that some nations are materially rich but spiritually poor. This is a mental health tragedy. What is needed is to combine both the material and the spiritual. There must be good science at the service of humanity instead of greed and power. Moreover, there must be good religions producing harmonious civilizations instead of religious wars.
