PH1104 Philosophy and Social Ethics: 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