Buddhism, Capitalism, and Rationality

Imagine the following scenario: you are standing around waiting in line to buy something in a crowded place, and when you get to the head of the line, you spot a $20 bill lying on the ground. You are sure it's not yours, but you hardly have a clue whose it might be. You ask someone next to you, and they do not know, but say they saw someone who was standing in that very spot a moment ago and just walked away. They point to the person whom they saw standing there, who is now about thirty feet away, with their back turned to you. You have no way to definitely verify whether the bill was really theirs or not, of course, so what do you do?

1. Pocket the money, figuring nobody can prove whose it is anyways, and that the person with their back turned to you, even if it was theirs, will probably be none the wiser.
2. Make some attempt to determine whether it makes sense to give the money to them. Maybe walk up to them and say, "Excuse me (ma'am/sir), but are you possibly missing something?"
3. Something else? (fill in the blank)

I am going to ignore choice 3) for the moment, because it adds unnecessary complexity that distracts from the point I am aiming to make now, and focus only on options 1) and 2). I think it's safe to say that the kind of "rationalism" one associates with capitalism, as an ideological habit and outlook, would choose option 1). I am talking about the kind of "rationalism" that EF Schumacher once disparaged in his book, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, when he condemned the kind of amorality and moral confusion he saw in the rather infamous statement of John Maynard Keynes that "foul is useful and fair is not". Here is the quotation to which Schumacher was referring (courtesy wikiquotes):

When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease … But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.

cf: Keynes and the Ethics of Capitalism by Robert Skidelsy

Keynes's conceit, of course, is that scarcity causes so much human suffering that the greed methodically cultivated by capitalism is necessary to counteract it. First we must await the dawn of a (literally) "golden future" brought to us by capitalism. Then, and only then, will we be able to "afford" to be guided by strictly moral thinking.

Buddhism has its own rational analysis of human suffering, according to which most of the preventable suffering we experience is self-inflicted, and is precisely related to our own intentions and ensuing behaviors.

The Buddhist analysis of the scenario above would take into account not only how much immediate need we personally might have for the twenty spot above, and not only how much need or obliviousness the other person who lost it might have of it, but also the longer term effects of the mental outlook we are cultivating in ourselves by considering only our own immediate material wellbeing. The five basic precepts of both Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism emphasize "do not steal" as fundamental to morality, right after "do not kill", with the exegesis of Buddhist texts further expounding that the meaning of "do not steal" goes far beyond merely not actively deceiving and depriving one's neighbor of that which is rightfully theirs, and actually requires "holding no thought of gain". It thereby even contains an active component of deliberately extirpating self-seeking thoughts and actively taking selfless actions.

Buddhism's rationality would say, "you must balance not only the benefit to yourself of being able to use the money you found for your own immediate needs and desires, but also consider the real harm you may cause yourself by indulging in ignoble forms of thinking that have the potential to induce future suffering for yourself and others, by potentially leading to excesses such as greed and infatuation with self-gain, even blinding you to the harm you may wind up causing others. Eventually, such blindness may come to actively harm you, too. Spiritually at the very least, but even materially at some point."

It should hardly be necessary for me to point out the harm that greed can cause individuals when they indulge it to the point of blind recklessness. Of course I could cite serious, scholarly studies, or point to the innumerable historical studies of such phenomena, going as far back as the Dutch "tulip craze" described in the famous book, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, or as recently as the numerous long-running Ponzi schemes (including Bernie Madoff's, among many others) that all collapsed in 2008 at the time of the economic crash. Numerous people have lost their entire life savings in a few moments of greed to schemes that any honest and sensible independent financial advisor could have saved them from. Common sense and personal experience alone should be enough to convince us of such truisms.

But unfortunately, as Buddhism emphasizes, "convincing" ourselves of such things on a purely rational level is hardly adequate, because we are not strictly "rational" beings, and our habits of thought and action become ingrained, and we are all too often and easily carried away by them, whatever we imagined our original intentions were. That is why Buddhism emphasizes active "precept practice": deliberately cultivating "sila" (virtue) on a daily basis, both for our own long term good and that of others (which are inextricably connected and complementary to each other, rather than in opposition as we commonly and superficially suppose). Though by now it may come across as hackneyed, the advice of Lao Tzu always bears repeating:

Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

Greed no doubt exists as a human character trait for evolutionary reasons. It is not some kind of evil accident. Undoubtedly it has or had some survival value as a form of "hedging against scarcity". And we are clever beings, who can plan far into the future against perceived threats. The trouble is, we are far too "clever" for our own good, and easily delude ourselves all the time. Hence the need for what Buddhism calls "mindfulness practice", as a counterbalance to our own delusional habits and patterns of thinking.

This "mindfulness practice" extends far beyond such mundane scenarios as the one I described above. It also relates to the kinds of entertainment we indulge in, the kinds of speech we engage in, and every aspect of our lives. We are always to ask ourselves, "am I indulging in negative or ignoble thinking and behaviors, or ennobling ones?"

No expectation of perfection is required here. We are not to make the better the enemy of the good. The point of such habits is not to become saints, but to bring ourselves back to something like balance, which we can so easily and disastrously stray from. At the moment, I am reminded of Tolstoy's violent antipathy towards Shakespeare. Tolstoy was, of course, a devout Christian anarchist, and perceived Shakespeare's lusty (and lustful) characters and exciting plots as inducing exactly the opposite of the kinds of moral virtues he obsessively sought to promote in the people around him. Shakespeare was a master of character development and insight into the many twisted aspects of human nature. Of course, we can enjoy Shakespeare's artistry without becoming infatuated with or seduced by the viciousness he often portrays.

We cannot be too careful, though, when we consider the kinds of almost maniacally deluded thinking that Keynes actually praises and recommends in the quotation cited above. Today, we are living in a world that is the product of precisely the kinds of mental attitudes Keynes promoted there, and we can plainly see the results. It is a world in which mass media are carefully and meticulously crafted to sell products based on deliberately promoting feelings of inadequacy and insecurity, of a neediness that can only be satisfied by excessive and unnecessary consumption, and also a maniacal form of self-absorption.

A group of cultural critics performed an experiment some years ago in which they recorded thousands of hours of cable and broadcast television programming across numerous channels, all the contents of which had been disseminated over the course of a single week, and proceeded to deliberately binge-watch the resulting recordings, a process which took several months to complete. One of the authors of the experiment reported that, while the content included the most varied kinds of programming, and was certainly impossible to completely characterize in just a few words, it was nevertheless possible to summarize one or two overwhelming feelings that arose from the watching of it, one of which was the experience that, "you there, sitting on the couch, are the center of the entire universe, and everything else in it exists solely for your own gratification."

Once in a great while (mainly when visiting relatives), I get to indulge in a brief interlude of such television watching, and only rarely has it differed greatly from the experience described by these experimenters. As a result of which (and also because of the character traits I observe in relatives of mine who have binge-watched television for almost the entirety of their adult lives), I experience a sort of revulsion even overhearing accounts of popular current television shows by people I know that is probably akin to the violent reaction Tolstoy had towards Shakespeare. Consequently, I choose never to watch these shows (or any televised entertainment at all, for that matter) on my own time, even though many people about me are or purport to be enraptured with the supposed artistry of some television shows.

Again, we can never be too careful, when we consider that not only is self-deception rampant, but that we are very much living in a world in which very intelligent people expend unlimited amounts of time and money creating messages whose purpose is solely aimed at maximizing ultimate profits on the sales of various commercial products and services. No advertiser wastes millions of dollars sponsoring content unless they are confident it will improve their profits. The proof of their effectiveness lies in their success, which will be apparent to any analyst who reviews their 10k statements (assuming the latter are not entirely fraudulent, which is admittedly not always a safe assumption).

Another truism that perfectly complements this observation and extends into numerous other areas as well, is the one, "Never attribute to malice what can be equally well explained by incompetence." To which I would add, "Do not attribute solely to malice what can be equally well explained by self-deception."

Such self-deception extends all the way to politicians, who swear up-and-down that they are not influenced by money-in-politics and its "pay-to-play" ethos, just as binge-television-watchers swear they are not being manipulated by the advertising and content they are watching.

What else is one to make of the grotesque absurdity we can witness right now in the state of Virginia at the moment, where an octogenarian incumbent ("minority leader" of the State Senate there), who in forty years has never before this year faced a challenger in his party's primary, swears with a straight face before an audience of hundreds that taking millions of dollars from the abusive monopoly utility "Dominion Power" has exerted no influence at all on his decisions in office? Such habits of self-deception, when shared with enough of his voters, may even allow him to pull off the seemingly impossible miracle of winning yet another term in office to add to his collection. (https://bluevirginia.us/2019/04/yasmine-taeb-speaks-truth-to-power-at-sd-35-debate)

But to believe the incumbent in this case, one has to accept either one of two apparent absurdities: either Dominion Corporation (how aptly named!) has no devotion to profit in its operations and is only spending these funds not for influence but for the public good, or that they are fools, and simply wasting their money for nothing in return. Once again, their 10k statements should be enough to supply proof to the contrary. And one can only hope that this year, his challenger will at last disabuse the electorate of his and Keynes's absurd conceit that "foul is useful and fair is not".