The Future of Wall Street: An Investor’s Perspective from the Intersection of Capital, Philanthropy, Business, and Human Evolution

Abstract

The future of Wall Street is tightly connected to the future of investing, economics, and business. These are linked to the evolution of democracy, planetary geopolitics, culture, and of course the environment. Yet, all of them are intimately dependent upon the level of consciousness of the human agents involved in all of the above. By applying Ken Wilber’s Integral Model in investing, the research presented in this paper argues about the following major trends that have been identified: (1) evolution of investing from traditional investing to integral investing, (2) goals convergence of traditional and philanthropic capital, (2) congregation of objectives between traditional and social business, (3) investors’ evolution toward world-centric or later stages of human development. Moreover, this paper contends that a certain percentage of investors are now significantly contributing to the resolution of the current crises. They achieve that by departing from traditional investing focused on profit-only toward integral investing, which provides the means and metrics for the parity of people, planet, and profit. Thus, the paper asserts that the future of investing is integral investing with self-actualizing investors as its agents. Integral investing is based on the essence of all existence, the interior as well as exterior reality. It is a reality in which high financial returns are inseparable from a high social, environmental, cultural, and an ethical impact, in addition to individual happiness and self-actualization. Therefore, the future of Wall Street is dependent upon the sustainable implementation of the parity between people, planet, and profit in investing, economics, business, and politics.

Keywords: Economics, Behavioral Economics, Investing, Business, Ken Wilber, Integral Model, Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. evolutionary economy