Buddhist Economics

Long before I had any more than the foggiest idea what Buddhism was about, I remember the deep impression EF Schumacher's chapter entitled "Buddhist Economics" from his book, "Small is Beautiful," made on me. Schumacher's major thesis in that part of the book was the basic confusion between means and ends prevalent in conventional (Western) economics, in comparison to the clarity and simplicity of those teachings of Buddhism that principally touch upon themes which today we refer to as "economics". The biggest insight, one which is really the heart of Buddhism itself, is that the multiplication of wants is a really, really bad idea, and no sound economic system, much less society, can ever rely on such a perverse basis. This is simply a translation of the second of the Four Noble Truths (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Noble_Truths) into economic terms, that suffering arises from "grasping and aversion".

Unfortunately for us, the determined -- I dare say maniacal -- multiplication of desires is the very foundation of capitalism as we know it. Also, research psychologists have only just managed to rediscover another truth that a certain prince in northern India noted two thousand years ago: it is far more emotionally painful to be forced to part with something once you have it than to have a desire for something new never be met. "Psychological addiction" is just a fancy way of describing the same truth.

So there it is: a double whammy. As if it weren't bad enough to desire something and suffer the pangs of feeling unfulfilled lest we get it, it is literally true that the even worse outcome for us, to quote the waggish joke, is to have our wishes fulfilled! For in the end, Buddhism informs us (and our own lived experiences easily confirm it) that nothing is permanent. So once we get something, our loss of it is already predetermined, it is only a question of when.

Yet here we are in a system that one may say has been scientifically determined to cause the "cancer" of suffering, and generally the worst kind of suffering, and that we have on the authority of not only modern psychological research, but also one of the world's great wisdom traditions. "What is to be done?"

The Buddha was a radical after a manner of speaking, there is no doubt, although he was probably not a Leninist. He did recognize that some kind of internal revolution was called for, though, and that is what he preached to his disciples.

I don't know if I necessarily have any more clarity on the answers to that question than the next poor slob on the street, although I do feel confident that a decent first step is to at least start asking such questions in the first place. An echo of a similar insight is heard in Socrates, father of Western philosophy: "the unexamined life is not worth living." The contemplative traditions have for many generations been elaborating detailed methods for asking these questions. They involve things like meditation, metta practice, giving and taking of precepts, etc.

At some point, though, merely asking questions is likely insufficient. One has to live and make actual decisions, however flawed they turn out to be. Hopefully, therefore, at the end of the process of self-examination, another process of discernment informed by the previous one offers up some more or less sound conclusions for our further consideration moving forward.

If it is really true that the multiplication of wants is profoundly antithetical to happiness, and even actively causes unhappiness, surely that has profound practical implications for every aspect of our lives. What can it mean for someone who watches television programming, for example, where they are being passively marinated in the production of such desires for hours? Or, for those of us who, mercifully, manage to escape such "programming", what can it mean to be surrounded by others who have been shaped in this way? Are we really immune to such forces when all or most of those in our immediate vicinity have been thoroughly shaped by them?

Now there are new media of communications, supposedly "multidirectional", "social" media, but they are overlayed on top of a society already thoroughly saturated in the older media, the ones about which Marshall McLuhan warned us. Now we have new and only very slight variations on the old themes. We hear about "FOMO", "fear of missing out", which is supposedly the biggest hazard of reading or watching videos of our friends hanging out with the cool kids, keeping up with the Jones, or just generally enjoying life with, Goddess forbid, possibly greater intensity or enjoyment than us. Oh no!

How very different such a "fear" is than the virtues extolled by the Brahmaviharas ("Divine Abodes"), one of which, we are informed, is "mudita", or "sympathetic joy", meaning that enjoyment which flows from the successes and enjoyment of others. (Yiddish and Hebrew have a word for a similar emotion: "nakhes".)

Can we imagine an economy in which our enjoyment flows from the pleasures and successes of others, at least as much as from our own?

John Ruskin, the 19th century philosopher, devout Christian (and, to hear Mahatma Gandhi tell it, the principal inspiration for the latter's social movement in India), in his book, "Unto This Last", noted that one could know a truly prosperous business, society, or country, by the status of the least of those living under it. If those at the bottom are doing well, that should surely impress us. Afterall, what does it prove if only a few at the top wallow in wealth, while vast numbers below them wallow in squalor? Surely that is no distinction at all. One can easily find countless examples throughout history of miserable places where a handful are obscenely rich.

The Buddha said that "good companions are the whole of the way". Likewise, Aesop said, "a man is known by the company he keeps." What, then, when an entire world system has been constructed, which it is hardly possible to completely escape, which is rather violently antithetical to our aspirations? People on the political left have wrestled with their own translation of the same kind of question: "Can one have socialism in one country?"

One of the Sixeen Bodhisattva Precepts perhaps offers a clue. "Not contriving reality for the self is called the precept of not indulging anger." Yet we know things around us are dissatisfactory in many ways, even downright perverse. Surely that is something about which anger is warranted.

Maybe anger is warranted. But the precept about anger does not simply say "anger", it refers to "indulging anger". "Indulging anger" means making a deliberate habit of it, fiercely holding onto it. I definitely get how that can be corrosive, to oneself and others. Who hasn't observed the harmfulness of anger as a habit?

Again, this points to habits of introspection as being necessary. One does not just generally decide to do something which one knows is harmful to oneself and others out of some sudden perverse impulse. Rather, one gets caught up in it, like a wave that builds over time, almost inexorably and often without consciously noticing it.

Then, if these habits of introspection are combined with actively building communities that engage collectively in such habits, one arrives at spiritual communities, "congregations", "sanghas".

The inevitable question presents itself, though: can a spiritual path translate into a political and social movement that brings about a positive collective change, transcending any narrow creed or religious tradition?

The Three Poisons

We are living today in a world economy which depends for its continued functioning on the digging up and burning, “cracking”, “fracking”, fissioning, or other processing of prodigious amounts of various noxious poisons out of the bowels of the Earth. Simpleminded people of all previous human societies surely would have concluded such a thing to be demonic. But any well educated member of the modern, smarter, “better living through chemistry” generation could easily disabuse them of such quaint superstitions. Fast forward fifty years to today, however, and most scientists are soberly but urgently trying to get through to us that, actually, the simpletons of yesteryear largely had it right, and that our continued survival on the planet now depends on taking a rather sharp u-turn. How did we arrive at such a strange impasse?

In Buddhism, it is taught that there are “three poisons” with which the human condition is inevitably beset: greed, hate, and delusion. To be sure, they are internal conditions, but they manifest in outward forms. To successfully wrestle with them, it is crucial that we attain clarity around our own intentions. Probably the greater part of what Buddhism calls “practice” involves seeking this clarity, as well as techniques for cultivating good intentions. The intersection between the inner and outer worlds is precisely where the most vital work happens.

In light of such a truth, I can hardly imagine a more pernicious doctrine than one which deliberately attempts to confuse matters, by taking the skull-and-crossbones off a bottle containing a poisonous substance and deliberately mislabeling it with, say, a smiling face. And yet, such doctrines are routine things in our world.

Take the old chestnut, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Ok, let us assume good intent about the original thought here: Perhaps it is not a deliberately vicious effort to sow confusion. It does point to the fact that the world can be complex, and that unintended consequences can arise from actions that come from a benign motivation. But the same thing can be said, equally if not far more likely, of actions motivated by bad intentions. So why not simply say, “the road to hell is paved with unforeseen or unintended consequences”? That is a pretty reasonable truism that is not ideological, but strictly practical.

Ideology exists, however, as surely as the sun, the moon, and the stars. Another word for it, the Buddhist one, is “delusion” (one of those poisons again!) Ideology is the particular form that delusion takes when it attempts to articulate justifications for things that are contrary on their face to the expectations that people of good will generally have about the world. So although some may quote the saying I have cited about “the road to hell” with benign if confused innocence, others have a very calculated ideological intention.

I am looking at various problems here through a Buddhist lens simply because it is the one with which I am most familiar. But one could equally well use a Christian or other lens from any of the world’s other “wisdom traditions”. Some essential qualities of wisdom are: deeply looking into the truth of things, beyond mere transitory “facts”, which may require constant revision from one moment to the next, as well as rigorously examining and clarifying distinctions between means and ends, and candidly noting and acknowledging anywhere that the two come into clear conflict.

There are real world consequences to unresolved internal contradictions in ourselves. In fact, life under capitalism derives its most stressful qualities from the lack of clarity around intentions, and conflicts between means and ends, conflicts arising both within ourselves and between ourselves and others. The excessive valuation and promotion of competition as an end in itself already flirts dangerously with the “three poisons” of Buddhism. In a world where the all-consuming “pursuit of happiness” for oneself, devil-take-the-hindmost, is the highest purpose of our economic lives, we find that, all of a sudden, we cannot trust either our own intentions or those of the people around us. I can hardly imagine a more senselessly stressful condition in which to place ourselves.

The aspiration towards “utopia” can be compared with the aspiration in Buddhism for a perfect alignment between means and ends, intentions and actions. Both of them depend crucially on the same purification of those intentions. A key insight of Buddhism is that the purification of intentions requires ongoing work, and is not compatible with laziness or lax morals. Instead, a rigorous personal examination of one’s own actions and mental states is called for. (In years past, left-leaning people have called for developing the habit of "self-criticism". Sounds familiar!) And the fact that an ideal is never perfectly attained is not an acceptable excuse for failing to try, just the opposite!

Here again, we can see one of those ideological blinders with which our civilization routinely seeks to cloud our thinking. “Oh, that can never work! Get with the real world!” is the kind of refrain anybody hears as soon as they promote an idealistic goal in any practical undertaking, especially business or economics. And yet, the world has now arrived at such an impasse that, ironically, only so-called “impractical idealism” can now save us. “Soyez réaliste. Demandez l’impossible,” exhorted the situationists in 1968. Today, these are practical and sober instructions frankly required for our basic physical survival.