Notes on Gnostic Ethics, Restorative Justice, Forgiveness & Interbeing

§1. From Marianne Williamson’s 2020 Presidential Campaign Website

“American politics today is disconnected from the heart. Our economic system is disconnected from the heart. Our criminal justice system is disconnected from the heart. Our educational system is disconnected from the heart. Our national security agenda is disconnected from the heart. And where there is no heart, there is no wisdom.”

§2. Revenge is not Justice. 

A retributive-punishing system is rooted in the mistake of using emotional pain as a basis for public policy. This system does too much punishing (i.e. the mass incarceration phenomenon) and not enough protecting and “making right.” (e.g. Out of 1000 people who rape, 200 are reported, 20 are moved forward to trial, less 5 are convicted, out of those 1 ends up behind bars, while 83% get away with murder.) (Ref.)

§3. Restorative Justice  

Based on an old, commonsense view of wrongdoing as a violation of people and interpersonal relationships. All indigenous cultures use restorative practices, as do many families. Whereas criminal justice sees humans as separate, autonomous beings, restorative justice sees individuals as part of an interconnected web of relationships. People who are harmed are centered in terms of the their harm being seen and valued and addressed, bystanders are called in to encircle the person, the person who harmed is called in to take accountability for what was done.

§4. Two different views of justice

Criminal Justice	Restorative Justice
Crime is a violation of the law and state	Crime is a violation of people and relationships
Violations create guilt	Violations create obligations
Justice requires the state to determine blame (guilt) and impose pain (punishment)	Justice involves victims, offenders, and community members in an effort to repair the harm and ‘put things right’
Central focus: offenders getting what they deserve.	Central focus: victim needs and offender responsibility for repairing harm.

§5. Three different questions

Criminal Justice	Restorative Justice
What laws have been broken?	Who has been harmed?
Who did it?	What are their needs?
What do they deserve?	Whose obligations are these?

(These charts from Howard Zehr, The Little Book of Restorative Justice) 

Common Justice in Brooklyn NY as a model of using restorative practices to deal with violent crime.

§6. Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ (All Are Related) - Lakota prayer. 

Are we separate from each other or are we inter-related and inter-connected? The concept of interrelatedness is key to understanding why needs, roles and obligations are so essential to restorative justice. “In this worldview, the problem of crime - and wrongdoing in general - is that it represents a wound in the community, a tear in the web of relationships. Crime represents damaged relationships. In fact, damaged relationships are both a cause and an effect of a crime. Many traditions have a saying that a harm to one is a harm to all.” (Howard Zehr, The Little Book of Restorative Justice (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2015), 29.) 

§7. The Meaning of Forgiveness as a Spiritual Path and Method for Philosophical Liberation

“The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.” Each human being is a strand in an interconnected web of relationships (an expression of Love) which perceives itself as separate and autonomous (an Ego, a ball of fear). 

§8. The Ego - Principle of Self-denial or Self-hatred, an image which replaces, and needs to suppress our awareness of, our true Self. “The ego is the mind’s belief that it is completely on its own.” “The ego is certain that love is dangerous, and this is always its central teaching.” “The ego literally lives by comparisons. Equality is beyond its grasp. The ego never gives out of abundance, because it was made as a substitute for it.” Narcissism as a form of self-hatred. (From A Course in Miracles)

§9. Two basic emotions of Love versus Fear, corresponding to two systems of thought, two perceptions of reality (fear-based view that we are all separate from each other versus the love-based view that we are all One.) The Ego is sustained by fear, and is dissolved by love, oneness, the fading of the illusion of separation.

§10. Forgiveness Practice (The Six Steps to Freedom derived from the Choose Again model, as created by Diederik Wolsak 

1. I am upset. Step 1 in the conflict/upset resolution dance is to acknowledge, own, that I am in conflict or upset. The conflict serves a purpose and will lead to a joining if resolved.

2. It is about me. The conflict is not about the other person. (In comes the little voice, “yea, right” ). The conflict is never about anyone but me. Trust this step even if you don’t believe it yet. Without this step, peace and joining will not happen. It is about me. Ok, ok, so it’s about me. I know that blaming anyone for the conflict will not get me what I really want and that is: to be happy.

3. Feel the feeling. How do I feel? It is surprising to see how hard it is to really know how I am feeling. This is where commitment to honesty is essential. I have to know how I feel in order to go to:

4. Remember when I felt this way before. How is that feeling familiar? Now I have to become a detective. I am looking for the source of this feeling. When did I first feel this way? Go back as far as I can in my memory. And after a little searching I’ll remember an incident when someone said or did something that made me feel that way. Now follows:

5. Establish what my judgement of myself was in that moment? What was my perception? How did  I interpret the situation? What was my judgment of myself in that situation? What did it say about me that that person acted or spoke that way? I’m not important. I’m not supported. I’m ignored. I’m not heard. I’m inadequate. What kind of person deserves to feel this way?

6. Embrace the Truth about me. Now I must shift my old perception. Who was the “i” that made that judgement about myself in that moment (eg.- I’m ignored)? Was it the real “I” or the false “i”? If it was the false “I”, the conclusion I made about myself in that moment was also false. My judgment of myself in that moment was wrong. It said nothing about me. Whatever happened way back when was not about me. Who I am is unchanged and unchangeable. The belief I formed about who I am is wrong and doesn’t serve me. It is easy to forgive myself for believing a falsity about myself.  

“Forgive me for believing I was _______. Forgive me for believing I am ______.” You name it; most of us have at least one of more of these limiting beliefs. So there it is. Now, I’M FREE.

4/30 Gnostic Ethics, Restorative Justice, Forgiveness & Interbeing

Sources for this class

1. Marianne Williamson on forgiveness (and A Course in Miracles) and her 2020 campaign position on criminal justice

2. Howard Zehr on RJ (co-founder of modern restorative justice movement)

3. Primer on Restorative Justice from Center for Justice and Reconciliation

4. Common Justice, a truly ground-breaking organization, the only one in the country using restorative justice to deal with violent crime as an alternative to incarceration.

5. Charles Eisenstein on Interbeing

6. Twelve Principles of Attitudinal Healing (Jerry Jamplolsky)

The essence of our being is love.
Health is inner peace. Healing is letting go of fear.
Giving and receiving are the same.
We can let go of the past and of the future.
Now is the only time there is and each instant is for giving.
We can learn to love ourselves and others by forgiving rather than judging.
We can become love finders rather than fault finders.
We can choose and direct ourselves to be peaceful inside regardless of what is happening outside.
We are students and teachers to each other.
We can focus on the whole of life rather than the fragments.
Since love is eternal, death need not be viewed as fearful.
We can always perceive ourselves and others as either extending love or giving a call for help.

Final Paper Topics

Due: Friday, May 10th
Length: 6 pages
Format: Argumentative, posing a thesis or question and offering sustained argument.
References: Use at least two sources from class and two outside sources.
Submit: Via email to justin@oursanctuary.org

1. Neolithic Economist Marshal Sahlins argued that hunter-gatherers remain the ‘original affluent society’ in the sense that their needs were easily met. Are these undeveloped peoples really wealthier than modern individuals? In your answer, explain what you mean by ‘wealth.’

2. Does evil exist? If so, what is it? If not, why should we deny its reality?

3. Do the activities of the CIA and the American Deep State contradict the belief that the US government is the leading edge of freedom and democracy? If not, in what sense are they consistent with that description?

4. In what sense is Climate Change an ethical question? How can it be understood as a question in distributive justice? What are our ethical obligations, and to whom do we owe them, regarding climate change and global ecocide generally?

5. Does climate change and related environmental challenges facing the human race require merely better energy technologies, or do these challenges call for a new ethics? If the latter, what ethical principles are required?

6. Does the present carry obligations towards the future? If so, how do we quantify the duties that presently existing peoples have to future generations?

7. In his essay “Buddhist Economics,” E. F. Schumacher argues that modern economics denies the inherent value of work. What have been the implications of this for how modern economies are structured and what might we do to create a system which values people?

8. Do the ethical principles of indigenous cultures differ significantly from the ethics of modern societies? If so, what are the relevant differences and which principles ought we to choose for our current circumstances?

9. The ethical principles of indigenous cultures, for example as described by Mohawk philosopher Clare Brant, reflect the different social and economic structures of traditional societies. How do these ethical principles rest on, and support these more traditional social and economic structures?

10. In her study of Ladakh, Helena Norberg Hodge argues that the root of all our key social and environmental problems is the global economy. Is she correct? If so, why? If not, why not? Explain and analyze her arguments.

11. Are human societies becoming less violent or more violent? Explore and analyze the relevant arguments for and against, including Four Arrow’s article from our class discussion.

12. In her study of dominator systems and partnership societies, Riane Eisler draws a distinction between two kinds of hierarchy: hierarchies of power, and hierarchies of actualization. What is the relevant difference between these two structures and how does the distinction help us understand the solution to equality between genders and/or classes?

13. Prison abolitionists argue for a restorative approach to justice to replace the adversarial model of justice currently institutionalized in what Mariame Kaba calls our “criminal punishment system.” How does this restorative model differ from our current carceral approach? What are some of the practices? What is its view of human relationship?

14. Are humans separate from each other or are they spiritually interconnected and inter-existent? What are the moral and social ramifications for how we answer this question?

15. Does civilization inevitably bring with it social inequality, violence and domination?

16. Have men always dominated western culture? If not, what evidence suggests the contrary?

17. Are Neolithic figurines evidence of a fertility cult or do they have a deeper meaningfor how we understand the possibilities for human culture?

18. What problems might be solved by adopting a new social guidance system based on partnership rather than domination?

19. Make up your own question but be sure to check it with me first.

20. What is forgiveness, and is it possible?

Good Luck Mighty Companion!

4/25 Dominator Systems / Partnership Solutions

Reading for this class
1. Finish Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade

Recommended
2. Interview with Ruth Gilmore on Restorative Justice
3. Chris Hayes Interview with Mariame Kaba

4/16 Introduction to Riane Eisler's Study of Partnership Societies

With Special Guest Philosopher Jen Taylor

Reading for this class
Riane Eisler, The Chalice & The Blade, Introduction & Chapters 1-4.

Notes on Anti-Indianism in recent American Scholarship

§1. Four Arrows (Cherokee Philosopher) exposes anti-Indianism “so as to encourage more people to awaken to the perspectives about life that guided human behaviors for most of our history, before “God moved indoors,” to quote my old friend, Sam Keen”

§2. “The grim prognosis for life on this planet is the consequence of a few centuries of forgetting what traditional societies knew, and the surviving ones still recognize. We must nurture and preserve our common possession, the traditional commons, for future generations, and this must be one of our highest values, or we are all doomed. To regain this sensibility from those who have preserved it we must pay careful attention to their understanding and practices.” (Noam Chomsky, 2013)

A. The “Dances-with-wolves” approach to Native American history

§3. The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend (2013) by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, given positive reviews by such prestigious and progressive publications as Salon and the Boston Globe which refer to the book’s “exceptional fairness and accuracy,” is a straight-forward example of gross anti-Indian bias, racism and fundamental misunderstandings about indigenous society and worldview and “the continued demeaning of Native Peoples, an approach that prioritizes Euro-centric people and values and ignores or dismisses the present by romanticizing or distorting the past.” (5)

§4. Red Cloud (Maȟpíya Lúta in Lakota, 1822-1909), Leader of the Oglala Lakota band, led successful military campaigns against the US army during Red Cloud’s War (1866-1868) in Wyoming and Montana, culminating in the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) which established the Great Sioux Reservation including Sioux ownership of the Black Hills, and set aside additional lands as unceded Indian territory in areas of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Nebraska, and possibly Montana. The treaty formed the basis of the 1980 Supreme Court case, United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, in which the court ruled that tribal lands covered under the treaty had been taken illegally by the US government, and the tribe was owed compensation plus interest. As of 2018 this amounted to more than $1 billion. The Sioux have refused the payment, demanding instead the return of their land.

§5. Based on questionable scholarship by white historians who use a discredited white person’s unauthorized autobiography of Red Cloud; Uses the word “savage” repeatedly, widely used in the 19th century to describe Native peoples; Totally ignorant of the spiritual and historical meaning of the Black Hills (Paha Sapa) for the Lakota people; Dismisses Lakota tradition and history which holds that the Lakota lived in the Black Hills for centuries.

B. Lakota society was not patriarchal but rather matrilineal

§6. Calvin & Drury assert that the Lakota are not only patriarchal, but that “the “Sioux” men badly treated their woman who, according to the authors, were “closer to slaves than second-class citizens by modern standards of thinking” (p.65). But “Women controlled most of the tribe’s resources. When men married, they lived with the wife’s relatives. Women elders were highly respected and adult women had equal power in decision-making. The children belong to the mother’s clan. Today, in spite of the loss of language and culture and in spite of hundreds of years of anti-matrilineal propaganda, the Lakota women are still the backbone of the Lakota nation.” (7)

§7. “Women are missing-in-action in nearly all studies of Native America, whether historical, social or anthropological. I believe this is because westerners are still reacting to the panic that European patriarchs felt upon discovering Turtle Island chock-full of self-directed, articulate, and confident Native women, all demanding to be dealt with as equals. The initial Euro-male horror was frank and obvious in first-contact records and the recoil remains, skewing discussion.” (8)

§8. Birth of the women’s rights movement in the territory of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Peoples in 1848 by Elizabeth Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Lucretia Mott.

C. Out-of-Context Emphasis on Warfare

§9. Supports the idea that war is natural part of humanity: “by applauding the Indian’s warrior traits while also picturing them as dirty, blood-thirsty, women-dominating savages, they show that this part of human nature, i.e. being war-oriented, proves that it is a good thing modern civilization took over.” (9)

§10. The development of western civilization as sufficient justification for genocide: “We did it for civilization” (10)

§11. Atrocities of American soldiers as temporary insanities versus the Indian’s inherent procivility towards violence, recalls Charles Mill’s point from The Racial Contract: Non-Europeans as savages, who live in the ‘wild.’ The classical social contract defines human beings by negation: we are the nonsavages, the ones who made it out of the ‘state of nature.’

§12. Peace as the default condition of traditional societies: “Peaceable preindustrial (preliterate, primitive, etc.) societies constitute a nuisance to most theories of warfare and they are, with few exceptions, either denied or “explained away.”

“The Original Affluent Society” by Marshall Sahlins in Stone Age Economics

§13. “Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a tragedy of modern times…”

§14. “There are two possible courses to affluence. Wants may be "easily satisfied" either by producing much or desiring little. The familiar conception, the Galbraithean way- based on the concept of market economies- states that man's wants are great, not to say infinite, whereas his means are limited, although they can be improved. Thus, the gap between means and ends can be narrowed by industrial productivity, at least to the point that "urgent goods" become plentiful. But there is also a Zen road to affluence, which states that human material wants are finite and few, and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate. Adopting the Zen strategy, a people can enjoy an unparalleled material plenty - with a low standard of living. That, I think, describes the hunters. And it helps explain some of their more curious economic behaviour: their "prodigality" for example- the inclination to consume at once all stocks on hand, as if they had it made. Free from market obsessions of scarcity, hunters' economic propensities may be more consistently predicated on abundance than our own. Destutt de Tracy, "fish-blooded bourgeois doctrinaire" though he might have been, at least forced Marx to agree that "in poor nations the people are comfortable", whereas in rich nations, "they are generally poor”. 

Notes on Ladakh and the Ethics of Traditional Cultures

A. Thesis of Helena Norberg-Hodge’s study Ancient Futures

§1. The root of all key social and environmental problems: the global economy

climate change, loss of biodiversity and cultural diversity, shift from self-sufficient rural living to energy-intensive urbanism, communal belonging to consumerist image-making; monoculture commercialization of life promoting competition over cooperation, universalizable skills over local knowledge, individualism over community and consumerism over spirituality.

§2. Localism:  A strategy for resistance and renewal, a “solution multiplier” which “reduces our ecological footprint, increases biodiversity, provides fuller employment, strengthens democracy and rebuilds community.” (xxi); not total communal self-reliance but rather “shortening the distance between producers and consumers whenever possible, and striking a healthier balance between local markets and a monopoly-dominated global market.” (xxi)

B. Themes from the study of indigenous societies (Helena Norbert Hodge, Ecologist)

§3. Health – holistic (restoring balance) vs reductive (controlling symptoms)

Almost everyone is fit and trim; The old are active until the day they die (37); very low stress, toxin-free, optimal diet lifestyle (39); Holistic energy medicine treats disease as imbalance; mental health issues are non-existent (41)

No sense of pride (rooted in insecurity) in the Ladakhis, e.g. the example of the man ordered around by the kids in the truck (84-85); the mindfulness of the Ladakhis (86). 

§4. Justice – restorative & DIY (focus on relationships) vs retributive, job of the state, focused on damages to individuals

Cultural focus on peace and non-violence, not expressing anger; “no fighting in the village in living memory” (46); the phenomenon of the “spontaneous intermediary” (47-48); Human scale villages (less than 100 houses), everyone knows everyone and is dedicated to “living together” (51)

§5. Social structures – egalitarian & heterarchical (matricentric) vs stratified & hierarchical (patriarchal)

Minimal disparities in wealth, 95% of population in the middle class; destroyed by monetary economy (103); Democratic/consensus politics for collective decision-making, the representative for each village council (goba) appointed by rotation. (49)

Flexible marriage relationships to fit into land constraints (from monogamy to polyandry to polygyny) (55)

No word in Ladakhi for romantic love. 

Child- rearing: unlimited and unconditional affection (66) but it does not lead to children being spoiled, just the opposite; kids with great responsibilities (66)

Parity of gender: women have lots of power (68); flexible gender roles in work and parenting

§6. Trade/Economy – gift-based, focused on group cohesion (principle of socialism) vs money-based, focused on individual consumption (capitalism)

Self-sufficient farms owned by individual families, a steady-state local economy designed to fit within the ecological limits to population growth. 

Agriculture as resilient, nature-based, self-sufficient vs “efficient”, hydrocarbon-based, and specialized for export

Private property (incl. land, houses, tools and animals) and labor which are shared. (53). But ownership in usufruct (stewardship) (58)

§7. The word "community" is derived from the Old French communité which is derived from the Latin communitas (com, "with/together" + munus, "gift"), a broad term for fellowship or organized society. 

“Community is woven from gifts. Unlike today's market system, whose built-in scarcity compels competition in which more for me is less for you, in a gift economy the opposite holds. Because people in gift culture pass on their surplus rather than accumulating it, your good fortune is my good fortune: more for you is more for me. Wealth circulates, gravitating toward the greatest need. In a gift community, people know that their gifts will eventually come back to them, albeit often in a new form. Such a community might be called a "circle of the gift.””  

Money creates separateness, can be hoarded and controlled, is quantified, promotes individualism and independence and selfish behavior. Gifting creates relationship, promotes cycling, is democratic, promotes community cohesion and self-full (vs. self-ish behavior (i.e. a more expansive experience of self.  

§8.  Worldview – spiritual with a basis in shared identity vs materialistic with a basis in separate identity

Buddhism woven into the fabric of life - the philosophy of interdependency versus individualism (75); reverence for nature, praying to the spirits of water and earth before sowing seeds. (19) Thanking animals for their lives (31)

Time: not commodified but based on natural cycles (35)

Nature as a living, conscious, sacred and intelligent being (Pachamana) vs. a non-living, non-intelligent mechanism which can be understood objectively.

(C) Native Ethics & Principles (Clare Brant, Mohawk Philosopher)

§10. The Ethic of Non-Interference • That is the principle that one Indian will never tell another Indian what to do. It is considered rude behaviour to give instructions or orders to another Native person. That’s quite different from the white society. Two white men at a cocktail party – say they’re standing there side by side – and if one of them announces he wishes to buy a pear tree another white man will immediately suggest that he buy a peach tree instead. In the white society the one who can out-advise the other is one up, and the loser is expected to take his defeat with good grace. Now in the Indian society, this is not permitted. Advising or instructing, or ordering or persuading, is always considered bad form or behaviour.

§11. The Anger Must Not Be Shown Principle • This also is a very widespead and very widely practised behaviour. It seems to have had its origin again in the Aboriginal society, in which there were shamans and witches about all over the place. And one dared not show one’s temper because these shamans and witches could cast a spell on you, put the bothers on you if you insulted or offended them, or showed them your temper.

§12. The Indian Concept of Time • Time is, to an Indian, something which must be used and enjoyed. One does not move onto something else until one has finished what one is doing. It seems to have had its origin – again I have to say “seems to” because we don’t have precise information – in that activities of Indians used to be regulated by the seasons, by the sun, and by the migratory patterns of birds and animals; a changing food supply, absence of electricity and hydro power, so they had to be dependent upon the seasons and nature to supply them with food, with light and all kinds of things. And having learned to live in harmony with nature and relevance to these things, the concept of “doing things when the time is right” came into play – which is still in play today. 

§13. Principle that Everything Is Shared • All the assets and resources of a community or of a family, or of the extended family, are shared and one is supposed to take no more than what one needs from the environment, than one needs to survive. To take more to waste is bad. To take more than one’s fair share or more than what one actually needs to survive is considered greedy and wasteful. This is one of the greatest of all the Native ethics and it’s universal. It could have had its origin in the need to show hospitality to wandering hunters even though there was not much food in the village. The hunters from another group, another family, or another clan, must be fed in order that they would take food back to their own people. That may have been the origin of it. But the principle is survival of the whole group over individual prosperity and individuality. This is the principle of Marxism, the principle of all socialism, and alleged to be the principle of Christianity as well. The Native people do not use it as a political ideology or as a religion; it is acted out as the way Native people live. The ethic of sharing has its corollaries, which are equality and democracy.

5. The Attitude to Gratitude • Gratitude among Native people is very rarely shown; it’s very rarely verbalized. One is not rewarded for being a good teacher, doctor, farmer, fisherman, hunter, because that is what you are supposed to be. If you are trained to be a nurse you should be a good one. To be less than perfect would be a bad thing for you to be. You would not be developing the best part. So that if you do a good job, that’s fine, you are not going to be thanked for it. To be thanked for it would be superfluous because doing a good job has its own intrinsic reward. Gratitude eventually is shown at the end of a long life. If one keeps one’s nose clean and does a good job, and one is perceived and regarded as a wise and venerable person, this is the greatest reward of all. 

7. Now the Teaching; Shaping Vs. Modeling • This is a more technical kind of thing. The white people use this method of teaching their children – it’s called ‘shaping’. Whereas the Indians use ‘modelling’. Shaping is B.F. Skinner’s ‘Operant Conditioning”, if you want to look into that one. Say a white person is teaching a white kid how to dress – he uses the shaping method, one way being “rewarding successive approximations” of the behaviour he wants. When we asked Josh, a reknowned hunter, how his father taught him to hunt. He said, “He didn’t teach me.” Well, that’s ridiculous, everybody has to be taught everything. The people and father in the hunting modelled hunting behaviour, and then suddenly, “Okay, you’re ready to do it, and you can do it forever.”

9. The Dependence-Independence Ethic • It might seem that because the Indian people live on welfare that they are very dependent people. This is again the furthest thing from the truth. Native people are the most independent minded people I’ve ever seen. One is expected to look after oneself, take one’s own council and not be told what to do by other people; make up your own mind about everything, listen to advice but not follow it very precisely, incorporate it into what you know is right, and go on from there.

4/4 Indigenous Ethics: Ladakh

Reading for this class
Helena Norberg-Hodge, Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, pp. 1-90.

Permaculture Energy Futures

Notes on Buddhist Economics & Permaculture Ethics

A. Buddhist Economics (Notes from E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful)

§1. Value judgments (implicit ethical principles) in allegedly ‘value-neutral’ modern economics

Work as a necessary evil, a cost from the employers perspective, a disutility from the worker’s perspective. > This evaluation incentivizes the development of automation and division of labor, essentially the creation of mindless boring jobs for the masses.

§2. Buddhist view on the purpose and value of work: (1) develop one’s faculties; (2) to overcome one’s ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; (3) and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence.  

“The consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.”

B. Buddhist versus materialist view of ‘development’ : maximizing peace versus maximizing consumption

§3. “The Buddhist sees the essence of civilisation not in a multiplication of wants but in the purification of human character. Character, at the same time, is formed primarily by a man’s work. And work, properly conducted in conditions of human dignity and freedom, blesses those who do it and equally their products.”

§4. “While the materialist is mainly interested in goods, the Buddhist is mainly interested in liberation. But Buddhism is "The Middle Way" and therefore in no way antagonistic to physical well-being. It is not wealth that stands in the way of liberation but the attachment to wealth; not the enjoyment of pleasurable things but the craving for them. The keynote of Buddhist economics, therefore, is simplicity and non-violence. 

§5. “For the modern economist this is very difficult to understand. He is used to measuring the "standard of living" by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is "better off" than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption.”  (A formula for the Good Life also argued for my Socrates, Jesus, Buddha, Thoreau and many other moral philosophers.)

C. How Buddhist Economics supports sustainability: Simplicity, Non-Violence, Self-Reliance 

§6. “Simplicity and non-violence are obviously closely related. The optimal pattern of consumption, producing a high degree of human satisfaction by means of a relatively low rate of consumption, allows people to live without great pressure and strain and to fulfill the primary injunction of Buddhist teaching: “Cease to do evil; try to do good.” As physical resources are everywhere limited, people satisfying their needs by means of a modest use of resources are obviously less likely to be at each other’s throats than people depending upon a high rate of use. Equally, people who live in highly self-sufficient local communities are less likely to get involved in large-scale violence than people whose existence depends on world-wide systems of trade.

§7. “While modern economics does not consider the health of the environment, “The teaching of the Buddha enjoins a reverent and non-violent attitude not only to all sentient beings but also, with great emphasis, to trees.”

D. Permaculture: Growing food while regenerating Soil

§8. Permaculture is ecological design aimed at creating systems that meet human needs while regenerating and healing the environment around us. It does this by applying a set of ethics and principles that guide us in designing connections, flows, and beneficial relationships among various elements, whether in a garden, a building or an organization, and mimicking the way that nature works. Permaculture is no one technique or process, but rather weaves together multiple approaches, technologies and solutions to problems of sustainability. Instead of designing separate things, we design connections and beneficial relationships. The word ‘permaculture’ was coined by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 1970’s, from ‘permanent agriculture’, but has come to encompass many sorts of systems: ‘permanent culture.’ 

E. Permaculture Ethics: Look after your place and its many Creatures

§9. Permaculture has three basic ethics: Care for the earth, care for people, and care for the future—sometimes framed as “return the surplus” or “limit consumption”. It has a set of principles that direct us to observe natural systems and mimic the way they work, catching and storing the sun’s energy, using biological and local resources, with minimal inputs of fossil fuel energy, and getting multiple uses out of each element. Permaculture favors low-tech solutions that empower ordinary people to take responsibility for their own needs and impacts. Our goal is more than sustainability: we work for abundance, regeneration and healing.

§10. Care for the Earth = Care for the Soil, the best register of overall environmental well-being; Stewardship of the land you live on, along with the plants and animals who live there, supporting biodiversity and the inherent value of all living things. Don’t try to save the whole planet, just protect what you have the power to protect.

§11. Care for People =  Looking after Self, Family, Tribe, Neighborhood, local and wider Communities. “The challenge is to grow through self-reliance and personal responsibility. Self-reliance becomes more feasible when we focus on non-material well-being, taking care of ourselves and others without producing or consuming unnecessary material  resources.” 

§12. Care for the Future = Setting Limits to Consumption & Redistributing Surplus. Reclaiming a sense of Abundance through limits; living within our ‘ecological footprint,’ sharing resources beyond our immediate circle of power and responsibility. 

F. Carbon Farming as a Solution to Climate Change. 

With the planet reaching the 400ppm carbon dioxide threshold, improved soil management through regenerative agriculture is one of the few solutions that could potentially turn the tide by sequestering large amounts of carbon in living soil. The most logical and realistic way to remove the 122 ppm from the atmosphere is to store it as 258.64 Gt of carbon in the soil throughout the world. By changing agriculture to one that regenerates soil organic carbon, we can not only reverse climate change, but we can also improve farm yields, increase water-holding capacity and drought resilience, and reduce the use of toxic agrochemicals.

Resources

David Holmgren's Permaculture Principles

patternlanguage.com
A Conversation with Christopher Alexander
A New co-housing project in CT
Hans' Lohse's Unfolding Wholeness Haus
Website for WWOOF
An article about One way of Living off the Grid
Tiny 'Bioarchitecture'
Blue Forest Tree Houses
450 sq. ft. houses
250 sq. ft. house on top of a mountain

Auroville, a famous sustainable community in India
Michael Reynolds' earthships
Earthship tour
Portraits of some eco-villages

Some Tiny Houses being constructed at The Sanctuary