Love and Accounting

18 Pages·2011·0.18 MB·English

by  Pala Molisa

Love and Accounting

Pala Molisa
School of Accounting and Commercial Law
Victoria University of Wellington
Wellington
New Zealand
Email: [email protected]
Tel: [phone]

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Abstract
This paper is about love and accounting. It explores, more specifically, how accounting might
be involved in the reproduction of certain social relationships and whether or not these are in
line with the principles involved in the nature of love or whether they are more consistent
with the disintegration of love in society. It also explores how accounting might be enriched
and transformed into a more empowering and emancipatory craft if love were made more
central to its practice. In order to explore these issues, this paper makes use of the spiritual
insights of nondualism which approaches love as both a state of consciousness or being that is
absolutely indispensable for “right action” and for living “the good life” and as inherently a
type of art and therefore as a fundamental human faculty and potential that can be realized,
cultivated and deepened through practice. From this standpoint, this paper suggests that
although accounting, in its current social form and functioning, is progressive and
empowering in many important ways, as a social practice it also exhibits important
pathologies that actually point to its complicity in the negation, distortion and disintegration
of love in society. Given this situation this paper closes by exploring some ways in which
accounting could begin to be re-orientated along more emancipatory lines by putting forward
some ways in which it could be re-structured as a more loving practice – that is, as a practice
in which love becomes a fundamental purpose or aim. These explorations are based on the
premise that lovelessness is at the heart of all the violence, conflict and dysfunction that
human beings have suffered throughout history and also that it is one of humanity’s most
supreme ethical and spiritual virtues. This means that its realization is central to not only
addressing all the violence, social injustices and environmental degradations that engulf the
world and that have plagued humanity but also as indispensable to living “the good life,” the
life of in which we are at our best and where we would find our deepest and most abiding
fulfilment. It is therefore hoped that this paper goes some way toward creating more space for
more love to enter into accounting discourse and practice.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is two-fold: on the one hand, to reflect on the social
functioning of extant accounting practice in reproducing the typical forms or expressions of
‘love’ that we find in contemporary society given its specific socio-historical conditions;
secondly, to explore how love could be understood from a more emancipatory perspective
and the role accounting could play in transitioning us to a more loving culture, a more loving
society.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper makes use of spiritual insights into the nature
of love and critical-theoretical examinations of the kind of love we tend to collectively
produce and experience given the historically specific social conditions we live within and
reproduce.
Findings – The author argues that because accounting is a social practice that aids in the
transformation and reproduction of contemporary society it creates space for a certain form of
love to flourish but because of some of the necessary socio-historical features of capitalism
and some of its more recent contemporary developments, ‘love’ has also tended to take on
certain pathological forms within it that accounting, in its functioning as a social practice, aids
in abetting and exacerbating.
Research limitations/implications: The paper is not an exhaustive treatise on ‘love and
accounting’ but is an initial attempt at introducing some of the ethical, political and social
issues that are involved in the relation.
Practical implications: One of the implications to come out of this paper is that new forms
of accounting and accountability practice might have to be created if we are to transform
accounting into a more loving practice and if accounting itself is to aid in creating a more
loving society.
Originality/value: The relationship between ‘love’ as an ethical and social
principle/practice and ‘accounting’ is under-researched and relatively neglected area. The
paper contributes toward addressing this lacuna.
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Key words: love, accounting, emancipation, spirituality, political economy

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a
resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom
all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains, but have
not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the
flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not
envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not
easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices
with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are
tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we
know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect
passes away…And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of
these is love.
(1 Corinthians 13: 1-10, 13)

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Introduction: Love as “the absent presence” – symptoms of
lovelessness in accounting

Reading books everyone died, none became any wise
One who reads the word of Love, only becomes wise
(Kabir Das – Dohas 13)

“Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.”
(Kahlil Gibran)

If you have it [Love], you don’t need to have anything else, and if you don’t have it, it doesn’t matter
much what else you have.”
(Sir James M. Barrie)

If many of our spiritual traditions and ancient religions are anything to go by,
love is one of humanity’s most supreme ethical values and spiritual virtues. There is
good reason that these traditions have held love out as such because it is it is nothing
less than what connects us to the ontological ground of existence, it is the essence of
human nature, and it is the raison d’être, the very aim and fulfilment of life. The
fundamental nature of love is symbolically conveyed, for instance, in the mythology
of ancient Greece, where from the pantheon of the gods and goddesses, Eros stands
forth as not only the eldest of the gods – older even than the Titans – but also the
youngest – eldest because love is the product of the Ground of Being and youngest
because love is what is born fresh and dewy-eyed in every eye that falls in love and in
every heart that loves (Campbell, 1972, p. 148). According to this creation myth, the
universe need never have been and it was only from an act of unconditional love by
Chaos, the formless Void, the First Mother and Ground of all Being that gave rise to
the universe. It was from the womb of this First Mother that the world came forth and
thus it is also her unconditional love that interconnects, looks after, and underlies all
of existence. This loving relationship or interconnectedness is symbolized by the fact
that her first two children were Gaia, Mother Earth, the created universe and giver of
all life and love to the earth and its inhabitants and Eros, creative energy and God of
Love himself (Curott, 1998, p. 150). This mythological motif of the universe coming
forth from the love of Mother Void is repeated in endless variations throughout the
world from Sumero-Babylonian myths of Tiamat and Marduk to Maori creation
myths (Campbell, 1949). Love is, in this sense, the Alpha and the Omega, the
beginning and the end, manifesting in its celestial aspect in the heavens and also here
on earth. Dante, for his part, also followed this classical lead in portraying love, in the
Divine Comedy, as the force that suffuses and turns the universe from the highest seat
of the Trinity above to the lowest pits of Hell (Campbell, 1972, p. 148).
It doesn’t seem to matter where you look because for so many of our spiritual
traditions and ancient religions, love is the supreme spiritual virtue. In the Hindu
Upanishads, for instance, love is “the first and last commandment” (The Upanishads,
Easwaran, 2009, p. 42). This injunction is reinforced that what we find in the Hindu
Vedas is an unbroken line of Rishis, sages, mystics, seers, masters, and saints who
have unequivocally affirmed, not through abstract theorizing, philosophical
speculation or dogmatic fiat but through their own direct experience, that beneath the
seemingly ubiquitous experiences of suffering, conflict, violence and separation that
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appear to be ineradicable aspects of the human condition, human beings are in their
essence nothing but love itself. This idea that we are, in essence, love itself is
expressed by the great South Indian master, Swami Nisargadatta Maharaj, when he
said (Chopra, 1997pp. 12-13):

“Life is love and love is life. What keeps the body together but love? What is
desire but love of the self?...And what is knowledge but love of truth? The
means and forms may be wrong, but the motive behind is always love – love of
the me and the mine. The me and the mine may be small, or may explode and
embrace the Universe.

This is why, in the Hindu tradition, in the Upanishads itself, we are called
“children of immortal bliss”; since we are in essence love, since we are one with life,
the indescribable bliss of Sat Chit Ananda, the Unitive State, is actually our birthright,
and its realization the fundamental aim and fulfilment of life. Because we are, in our
innermost essence nothing less than love itself, we were born into bliss, we are meant
to live in bliss, and we will return to bliss eternal upon the extinguishment of our
mortal coil (Chopra, 1997). Contrary to Freud’s dark view of human nature, the Vedas
declare that human beings “are born in bliss, sustained in bliss, and return to bliss
after death” (Chopra, 1997, p. 11). The power and poetry of the Upanishads is almost
unmatched in proclaiming love as the first and last commandment since it is the
feeling of bliss and oneness that arises when one is in felt connection, in at-one-ment,
with the Self, with the divine indwelling god who is Truth, Existence and Bliss, the
eternal and the infinite, the atman-brahman, “the Lord of Love” (Easwaran, 2009).
Similarly, if we were to consider the fundamental guiding leitmotivs of Judaism, one
of the most profound of our Occidental traditions surely one of them would have to be
the unbroken Ariadne thread through the teachings of the Old Testament prophets of
faith in the powers of humanity to realize a world of peace between nations, and
harmony with nature, by developing our capacities of love and reason (Fromm, 1966).
In ‘straw man’ caricatures of Judaism and often anti-Semitic writings, the Old
Testament is often portrayed as expressing exclusively the principles of justice and
revenge in contrast to the New Testament which is about love and mercy. And yet the
principle of “Love your neighbour as yourself” was already old and upheld by the
great prophets of the Old Testament before Jesus ever came along (Leviticus 19: 18).
Jesus, rather than superseding the Torah was arguably simply expressing the essence
of Judaic Law by condensing “all the law and prophets” to two injunctions about
love.1 Ever since then, “love” has been the central leitmotiv to Christian mysticism,
ethos and theology. The Buddha’s entire teaching could arguably be condensed to his
injunction to “Love yourself and watch – today, tomorrow, always,” with no loss of
spiritual power or undue distortion because once “yourself,” your consciousness, has
expanded beyond you as a skin-encapsulated ego and your more immediate
identifications or “ties of blood and soil” to encompass and love the entire universe or
all of life, that feeling of love or oneness is the basis of all “right action,” all inner
fulfilment (Osho, 2001, p. 6; Fromm, 1966). Similar observations can be made for
Islam. The central leitmotif of Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī’s thinking, the towering

1 Jesus pointed to the centrality of love to Judaism (and later Christianity) when he condensed “all the
law and the prophets” to two commandments: the first which was “You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” this is “the greatest and first
commandment”; the second is like it and is, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Matthew 22:
37-40).
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Sufi mystic and poet of 13th Century Afghanistan, is tawhīd; the Unitive State or
oneness with God; a state that cannot be realized without an intense burning to be
united with one’s beloved. In fact, for mystics such as Rumi, “love” is not so much a
feeling or emotion which are by nature transitory and impermanent but a state of
being; a state of consciousness that cannot be lost, cannot go away, only forgotten or
covered over, because it is a necessary aspect of the underlying ontological condition
or essence of all life. Love as the essence of life is what Rumi is arguably pointing to
when he says, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the
barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Because you are, in essence,
love you cannot lose it; all you have to do is to remove those barriers in your
consciousness that prevent you from feeling it and that keeps you cut off from it.
Remove them, and love is what you spontaneously feel; what naturally comes to
surface and overflows into your experiences and actions through the plenitude and
over-abundance of your being. This is also what Nisargadatta Maharaj, the great
South Indian mystic is implying by his statement that “Life is love and love is life”
(Chopra, 1997, p. 11). Love is the essence of life: to love is to be one with life
because “life is love”; to not love is to miss it because “love is life.”
In Buddhism, there is the loving figure of Avalokiteshrava-Kwannon,
Boundless Love, perhaps the most revered figure in the Buddhist pantheon, is the
Mahayana Bodhisattva who although he was able to realize complete liberation, to
enjoy the Ultimate Boon through absolute Moksha or release from the karmic cycle of
birth and rebirth, actually foregoed it because he was so filled with compassion of the
suffering in the universe that he vowed to help all other beings on their own paths to
enlightenment and salvation before he himself could be released (Campbell, 1949).
Up and down the line, no matter the spiritual tradition or religion, there is a striking
universality, a common spiritual teaching, which points to love as nothing less than
the very ground, the aim and the ultimate fulfilment of life.

If our spiritual traditions and ancient religions are therefore anything to by, they
seem to indicate that love is one of the most vital of human needs. I would suggest
that this in fact bears if we were to consider people’s behaviour from a sociological
point of view. If we considered the sheer volume shelf space, flooring space and print
runs that are dedicated to entertainment magazines, romance novels, and self-help
books that have love as their subject-matter, if we took into account the hundreds of
often trashy songs about it that play on our airwaves, and if we looked at the endless
number of films, television programmes, and gossip channels that talk about it, the
only possible conclusion that we could arguably come to is that people place huge
significance on the importance of love. It also indicates, I think, that they are also
starved of it (Fromm, 1957, p. 1). It indicates that, for the most, love isn’t a living
reality, an abiding experience, a self-evident ‘fact,’ in most people’s lives (Tolle, 2004,
2005; Chopra, 1997). Medical research bears out the idea that love is a vital human
need in that it is central to physical health and psychological well-being (Chopra,
1993; Fromm, 1957). I’d also suggest that if we were to consider our own direct
experience as well it would only confirm just how important love is for living “the
good life,” the life of vivere bene, because it is only in a state of love when we’re
aligned with the evolutionary impulse of the universe, when we’ve acted
spontaneously in a compassionate or virtuous way and when we’ve glimpsed the
possibility of realizing our deepest and most abiding fulfilment (Tolle, 2005; Fromm,
1957).

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Given all this, there is something rather striking about the state of accounting.
Although it is widely recognized as a profession and as a social and ethical practice
(Arrington and Francis, 1993; Francis, 1989; Shearer, 2002; Shearer and Arrington,
1993), the notion of “love” – one of humanity’s most supreme ethical and spiritual
values – is notably absent from most of its discourse and practice. Whenever there is
discussion about accounting’s ethical orientation, love is hardly ever considered as a
norm that ought to ground and inform its conduct and practice.
Consider our Codes of Conduct, for example. In the 2010 AICPA Professional
Code of Conduct, for example, in which the ethical standards of the accounting
profession in the United States are propounded, nowhere is love mentioned as a
guiding ethical principle (or at all, for that matter) (AICPA, Code of Professional
Conduct, 2010). Consider, as another example, most of the discourse surrounding the
“social responsibility” of business that accounting promotes through its reporting
practices, whether of the orthodox financial, management accounting or international
accounting kind or the more ‘stand alone’ ones of environmental, social, or
sustainability reporting practices. Here, we would find much talk around notions of
“public interest,” “social responsibility,” “objectivity,” “accountability” and
“transparency” – not to mention how often these benign-sounding terms actually
masks pernicious and rapacious organizational behaviour (Gray, 1992; Gray et al,
1996, 1997; Gray and Milne, 2005; Livesey, 2002; Milne, Tregidga and Walton, 2009;
Tinker and Gray, 2003; Neu and Graham, 2005; Tregidga and Milne, 2006) – but
rarely, if ever, is “love” actually talked about and invoked as a guiding ethical norm.
Even in the academic literature, a field commonly (if not mistakenly) viewed as a
place of open debate and exploration, of self-reflexive discussion and dialogue, there
is hardly any discussion of “love” as an important ethical norm for guiding accounting
practice. This is even the case for critical accounting research which, in comparison to
‘mainstream’ accounting research that is influenced by positivistic, neoclassical
economic and utilitarian philosophies (Arrington, 1990; Chua, 1986; Tinker, 1988,
1991; Tinker et al, 1982; Williams, 2004a, b, c, 2009), is much more aware of the
hegemonic, distributive and ideological functioning of accounting as a social practice
(Tinker, 1980, 1985; Cooper and Sherer, 1984; Neu et al, 2001). In the Accounting
Review or Accounting, Organizations and Society, for instance, widely considered as
two of our premiere accounting journals that have established a certain level of
prestige in the fields of quantitative and qualitative research, nowhere does the word
“love” appear in any of their article abstracts. We would arguably have to go to the
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal before finding a paper that includes
“love” in the abstract, much less that makes the relationship between ‘love’ and
‘accounting’ central to its subject-matter (McKernan and Kosmala MacLullich, 2004;
although also see, more recently, the Critical Perspectives on Accounting Special
Issue on “Emancipation and Accounting”; see, for example, Molisa, 2011; Carter and
Spence, 2011; Dillard and Reynolds, 2011; Gallhofer and Haslam, 2011; Jacobs, 2011;
McPhail, 2011). But perhaps most importantly, if we were to look at the nature of
accounting techniques, calculations, standards, rules and regulations, and how they
tend to be applied in practice, love does not figure at all in their organizational and
social aims. When it comes to management accounting, the overriding aims of
accounting include are “profit maximization,” “efficiency” or “rate of return” (Tinker,
1985; Bryer, 2006); when it comes to financial accounting reporting, the aim is a
narrowly restricted form of social accountability that privileges the egoic self-interest
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of the amoral neoclassical economic self (Shearer, 2002); when it comes to national
accounting, the aim is “Gross Domestic Product” or “economic growth” which is
linked to a narrow conception of “the public interest” defined through the
instrumental precepts of cost-benefit analysis, moral utilitarianism and neoclassical
economics (Gray et al, 1996; Tinker and Gray, 2003). All these aims place the social
and economic imperatives of Money, Capital, and Power above love. “Love” is, in
this light, a kind of ‘absent presence’ in accounting discourse and practice; one that
has a resounding silence when it is contrasted against its treatment in other fields
where it is held up as such a fundamental ethical value and spiritual virtue.

This, of course, wouldn’t be cause for concern if love has no legitimate place in
accounting, if they were two mutually exclusive phenomena, and if there wasn’t
anything at all wrong with accounting. But accounting has huge problems Critical
accounting research has powerfully demonstrated that, as a social practice, accounting
is directly and intimately implicated in the reproduction of so many of the social
inequalities, economic exploitation, violent practices and environmentally destructive
consequences on which our current social system of contemporary global capitalism
is based. Critical accounting research has shown, for instance, how accounting in its
distributive role reflects and perpetuates unequal social relations (Tinker, 1985); how
it facilitates the exploitation of labour by Capital and the extraction and appropriation
of surplus value in core and peripheral countries (Tinker, 1980); how it ideologically
aids in the construction of dominant class hegemony (Cooper, 1980) and the
privileging of first-world, white, middle-class worldviews and interests (Everett and
Neu, 2000; Neu, 2001); how it therefore produces various forms of organizational and
social alienation (Tinker, 1984); how it plays a role in reproducing and exacerbating
certain forms of social conflicts, contradictions, and crises (Cooper, 1980; Cooper and
Sherer, 1984; Cooper, 1992; Tinker, 1980, 1985; Lehman and Tinker, 1987; Neu et al,
2001); and how it is the decision-making informational tool that drives unsustainable
and environmentally destructive organizational behaviours (Gray, 1992; Gray et al,
1996; Neu et al, 1998; Cooper, 1992; Cooper et al, 2005).

It is in this context that this paper’s objective and rationale arises. This is a
paper about love and accounting. More specifically, it is a paper that explores, on the
one hand, the ways in which accounting, in its current social form, might be related to
love and, on the other hand, the ways in which accounting might begin to be
transformed into a more enriching and emancipatory practice by making love its
underlying purpose or aim.
This paper is based on the possibility that our spiritual traditions and ancient
religions are right in holding love out as one of humanity’s most supreme virtues and
also that the failure of people to realize love is in fact the root cause of all the
suffering, violence, conflict, dysfunction, injustice and inequality that has plagued
humanity throughout history and that confronts the world today.

In order to explore the nature of love and its relation to accounting both in its
current form and in its other potentially more emancipatory and as-yet-unrealized
forms, this paper adopts a hermeneutic or approach to interpretation that draws on
nondualism or what Erich Fromm might have called rational mysticism (Molisa, 2011;
Vivekananda, Fromm, 1957, 1966; Tolle, 2004, 2005). Nondualism is an approach to
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spirituality or spiritual realization based on three premises; namely, that (1) there is an
infinite, changeless reality or consciousness through which all things are one beneath
the world of change, (2) that this same consciousness- reality lies at the core of every
human personality, and (3) that the purpose of life is to discover this consciousness-
reality experientially: that is, to realize God while here on earth as your own
innermost and indestructible essence (Easwaran, 2007, p. 17; Tolle, 2004, p. 13; Tolle,
2005, p. 219). These premises are the same three that undergird what Aldous Huxley
called “the Perennial Philosophy” – perennial in that they are all well-springs of all
spirituality and religious faith and they are found in every age and culture (Easwaran,
2007, p. 17). If we looked at our major spiritual traditions, we would find nondualistic
philosophy in all of them and particularly in their more mystical currents or sub-
streams such as Advaita Vedanta in Hinduism, Zen and Dzog-chen of Tibetan
Buddhism, and Sufism in Islam, to Hasidism and Kabbala in Judaism, and Gnosticism
and mysticism in early Christianity (Tolle, 2005; Vivekananda, 2003; Easwaran,
2009). If we considered the works of humanity’s greatest mystics, one of the striking
things that would come through is how what unifies their teachings is this
nondualistic thread (Underhill, 1955). In fact, we could even argue that what unites
humanity’s greatest spiritual teachers, our great “Masters of Living,” from Krishna,
the Buddha and Lao Tzu to Moses, Jesus Christ and Mohammed, is that they are all in
essence teaching the path of nondual realization (Molisa, 2011; Vivekananda, 2003;
Tolle, 2004).
This is why in exploring these issues and the nature of love, I haven’t restricted
myself to any one spiritual tradition, religion, theology, or theoretical perspective
because the underlying premise is that all spiritual traditions have something to teach,
are of value, and furthermore, that they at heart or in essence on in that they all are
trying to realize this nondualistic, preconceptual Truth that all religions, philosophies
and ethics point to in their mythologies, narratives, rituals, symbols, images, and
practices. this is not to say that we can ignore cultural differences or that these
socially and historically conditioned variations are of no significance but that they are
to be recognized alongside the nondualistic insight that “…in essence there is and
always has been only one spiritual teaching, although it comes in many forms” (Tolle,
2004, p. 9). Such socio-historical and existential distinctions are what informs critical
forms of theorizing which are informed by the kind of dialectical thinking that
recognizes the importance of both socio-historical contextualization to the
understanding of human nature as well as the metaphysical and transcendental
dimensions of life (see, for example, Molisa, 2011; Fromm, 1957, 1966).

In order to explore this paper’s main objectives, this paper makes use of the
spiritual insights of nondualism which approaches love as both a state of
consciousness or being and as inherently a type of art or practice. An important
implication of treating love as a state of being is that it is only through this state of
consciousness that we’re able to spontaneously practice “right action” and also only in
this state are we able to realize those particular inner experiences that are the most
fulfilling and enriching given our human nature. We will discuss how this state of
consciousness is realized, why it is the basis of “right action” or virtue, and what these
inner experiences actually entail. An important implication of treating love as an art,
on the other hand, is the idea that love is a human faculty and potential, fundamental
to well-being, that can be realized, cultivated and deepened through practice (Fromm,
1957).

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Using this exploration of love as a basis, this paper suggests that although
accounting, in its current social form and functioning, is progressive and empowering
in many important ways, as a social practice it also exhibits important pathologies that
actually point to its complicity in the negation, distortion and disintegration of love in
society. Given this situation this paper closes by exploring some ways in which
accounting could begin to be re-orientated along more emancipatory lines by putting
forward some ways in which it could be re-structured as a more loving practice – that
is, as a practice in which love becomes a fundamental purpose or aim. These
explorations are based on the premise that lovelessness is at the heart of all the
violence, conflict and dysfunction that human beings have suffered throughout history
and also that it is one of humanity’s most supreme ethical and spiritual virtues. This
means that its realization is central to not only addressing all the violence, social
injustices and environmental degradations that engulf the world and that have plagued
humanity but also as indispensable to living “the good life,” the life of in which we
are at our best and where we would find our deepest and most abiding fulfilment. It is
therefore hoped that this paper goes some way toward creating more space for more
love to enter into accounting discourse and practice.

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