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

4/2 Buddhist Economics and Permaculture Ethics

Texts for this class
1. E. F. Schumacher, "Buddhist Economics" 
2. Permaculture Documentary: "In Danger of Falling Food"

Notes on the Ethics of Climate Change

§1. Climate change is a scientific, political, social issue. In what sense is it a moral question?

§2. Headings towards 2 degrees above Pre-industrial baseline

Before the 18th century, when humans in the industrial west began to burn coal, oil and gas, our atmosphere typically contained about 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide. We’re now well over 400 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere. Warming of more than two or three degrees will badly impoverish nature. Many ecosystems will be damaged. About 20 to 30 percent of living species will be put at risk, and many more than that if temperatures rise as far as four degrees. Corals, which protect many coastlines, will be damaged by the warming and acidification of the oceans. Levels of atmospheric CO2 determine “equilibrium climate sensitivity,” or “climate sensitivity”, defined as the number of degrees by which the atmosphere would eventually warm if the concentration of carbon dioxide were to double from its pre-industrial level and stay at that doubled level forever.

§3. “The world is probably at the start of a runaway Greenhouse Event which will end most human life on Earth before 2040. This will occur because of a massive and rapid increase in the carbon dioxide concentration in the air which has just accelerated significantly. The increasing Greenhouse Gas concentration, the gases which cause Global Warming, will very soon cause a rapid warming of the global climate and a chaotic climate.” (Arctic News, Sept. 2013)

§4. 2018 IPCC Report: Limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society, according to the latest report from the world's leading body of climate change experts. 

§5. Cost-benefit analyses of clean energy systems are engineering and economics problems but also moral problems insofar as they involve the balancing of different values and the interests of different beings.

§6. Public Vs Private Morality Questions: What should governments do to reduce carbon emissions by supporting clean energy systems and reducing carbon emissions? 

Private morality: What are my own personal duties to respond to climate change?

Duties of Justice - To not harm others

Duties of Goodness - To improve the world

§7. Are CO2 emissions an injustice? 

Causing floods, droughts, fires, forced immigration, famine

§8. Who suffers? Many currently living people, many people in poor countries who did not contribute to the problem, countless future peoples. 

§9. How much should we sacrifice the resources (less travel, amenties, meat, etc). of those currently living for the sake of future peoples? What are our duties to the future? Depends on the “Discount Rate” Discount rate measures how fast the value of goods diminishes with time. 

If the future generation is going to be richer than us, then the discount rate will be less. The Stern Report uses a discount rate of 1.4 %. A $trillion worth of goods received in 100 years is valued at $247 billion today. The world should invest 1% of total output (approx. $500 billion today) to reduce emissions. 

William Nordhaus uses 6% discount rate. A $trillion received in 100 years is equal to $2.5 billion today, a very slight sacrifice.

§10. Duties of Governments 

The atmosphere as a limited resource, concerns distributive justice. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) treaty was adopted in 1992, and has been ratified by almost every nation on Earth. It aims to bring emissions under control through international agreement. 

§11. COs emissions as an externality, left out of the cost of producing power, and so represent a market inefficiency, to be corrected by including the price of carbon in the cost of producing power, the ‘social cost of carbon’

§12. Two ways to do this: (a) a carbon tax (e.g. $0 to $200/ton of carbon emitted).

(b) Cap-and-Trade system (adopted by Kyoto Protocol 1997) - Each countries emissions capped, then carbon credits distributed - permits to emit which are then traded. Over time, the cap is 

lowered. But what is the social cost of carbon?

§13. Personal Duties

Our personal carbon emissions cause harm to others. From a justice standpoint, we have a duty to pay restitution or to reduce harm by reducing emissions. Emissions will wipe out more than six months of healthy human life. Each year, your annual emissions destroy a few days of healthy life in total.On these figures, the monetary value of the harm you do over a lifetime ranges between $19,000 and $65,000, or between 65 cents and over $2 per day for every day you are alive. (half a billionth of a degree)

Two ways we can meet our moral duty:

Reduce personal emissions: Do not live wastefully. Be frugal with energy in particular. Switch off lights. Do not waste water. Eat less meat. Eat local food. And so on. Many of these are steps you can take at little or no cost to yourself, and you should certainly take those ones. 

Offset the emissions: Plenty of commercial organizations offer to do this for you as an individual. You pay them a fee per tonne of offsetting you ask them to do. They use your money to finance projects that diminish emissions somewhere in the world. Most projects are located in developing countries. Most of them create sources of renewable energy. Suppose an average American causes 30 tonnes a year to be emitted. Her annual emission could be offset for a mere $300.  

§14. Does it matter? If we have indeed passed it, your own emissions make no difference in the long run. There will be catastrophe whether you make them or not. But this should not make you think they are harmless. If we are on track to disaster, your emissions accelerate us along the way. They bring the disaster nearer, and that is harmful. If there is to be a catastrophe, the later the better. So even fatalism does not give you a good reason to doubt that your emissions are harmful.

§15. If we were certain that extinction was inevitable, how does this change our ethical obligations to each other? How should we live our lives? 

3/28 Ethics of Climate Change

Texts for this class

1. John Broome, "The Ethics of Climate Change"

Recommended

Peter Singer, "Ethics and Climate Change"

Notes on the Deep State, the CIA and Political Assassinations

A. Ponerology

a. Psychopathology - 1% of Americans who feel no empathy.
b. Etheric Energy-Vampires, “demons”
c. Concentration of Power - Dopamine feedback-loop based on fear/control

B. President Eisenhauer’s farewell warning about the “military-industrial complex”

§1. “We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

C. The Deep State

§2. “…another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose.”

A loose (non-monolithic) network of financial(banking) organizations, intelligence agencies, powerful law firms, military leaders and political power-brokers who come together from time to time when their interests coalesce: the “military-intelligence-banking-energy complex” [my definition]

D. The CIA as a case study in the Evils of Centralized Power

§3. Creation of the CIA - President Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947, creating the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Council. The CIA is accountable to the president through the NSC — there is no democratic or congressional oversight. Its charter allows the CIA to "perform such other functions and duties… as the National Security Council may from time to time direct." This loophole opens the door to covert action and dirty tricks; §4. 1948 expansion of the mission to ‘covert actions’ - The CIA recreates a covert action wing, innocuously called the Office of Policy Coordination, led by Wall Street lawyer Frank Wisner. According to its secret charter, its responsibilities include "propaganda, economic warfare, preventive direct action, including sabotage, antisabotage, demolition and evacuation procedures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world.”

E. CIA overthrowing governments since 1953

§5. The CIA justifies these actions as part of its war against communism. But most coups do not involve a communist threat. Unlucky nations are targeted for a wide variety of reasons: not only threats to American business interests abroad, but also liberal or even moderate social reforms, political instability, the unwillingness of a leader to carry out Washington’s dictates, and declarations of neutrality in the Cold War. Indeed, nothing has infuriated CIA Directors quite like a nation’s desire to stay out of the Cold War. The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that by 1987, 6 million people had died as a result of CIA covert operations. (2) Former State Department official William Blum correctly calls this an "American Holocaust."

§6. 1953 Iran – CIA overthrows the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh in a military coup, after he threatened to nationalize British oil. The CIA replaces him with a dictator, the Shah of Iran, whose secret police, SAVAK, is as brutal as the Gestapo.

§7. 1954 Guatemala — CIA overthrows the democratically elected Jacob Arbenz in a military coup. Arbenz has threatened to nationalize the Rockefeller-owned United Fruit Company, in which CIA Director Allen Dulles also owns stock. Arbenz is replaced with a series of right-wing dictators whose bloodthirsty policies will kill over 100,000 Guatemalans in the next 40 years.

§8. 1961 Congo (Zaire) — The CIA assassinates the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba. However, public support for Lumumba’s politics runs so high that the CIA cannot clearly install his opponents in power. Four years of political turmoil follow.

§9. 1973 Chile — The CIA overthrows and assassinates Salvador Allende, Latin America’s first democratically elected socialist leader. The problems begin when Allende nationalizes American-owned firms in Chile. ITT offers the CIA $1 million for a coup (reportedly refused). The CIA replaces Allende with General Augusto Pinochet, who will torture and murder thousands of his own countrymen in a crackdown on labor leaders and the political left.

§10. 2019 Venezuela - The plot to overthrow Nicolás Maduro is being publicly promoted as an opportunity to steal Venezuelan oil for the benefit of U.S. corporations. They’re not even pretending.

F. Was the assassination of JFK a Deep State Coup organized by the CIA?

§11. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th POTUS, assassinated on Nov. 22nd, 1963 in Dallas Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested 70 minutes after the event. At 11:21 a.m. November 24, 1963, as live television cameras were covering his transfer from the city jail to the county jail, Oswald was fatally shot in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters by Dallas nightclub operator by Jack Ruby, a known police informant. After a ten-month investigation, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald assassinated Kennedy, that Oswald had acted entirely alone, and that Ruby had acted alone in killing Oswald. A later investigation, the US House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed with the Warren Commission that the injuries that Kennedy and Connally sustained were caused by Oswald's three rifle shots, but they also concluded that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.

§12. Evidence of CIA involvement with the assassination 

CIA hatred of JFK connected to Bay of Pigs (1961) and the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962); Military Leadership hatred of JFK connected to Vietnam and Cuba policy of reconciliation; Lee Oswald’s suppressed background in US intelligence agencies; cover-up orchestrated at the highest levels of US government: autopsy tampering, the “Magic Bullet Theory,” ignoring of key witnesses, mysterious deaths of many key witnesses, over 100); Jim Garrison’s lawsuit against the CIA, successful lawsuit against E. Howard Hunt (legendary CIA assassin) plus death bed confession remarks.

G. A false flag is a covert operation designed to deceive; the deception creates the appearance of a particular party, group, or nation being responsible for some activity, disguising the actual source of responsibility. Other likely false flag operations: MLK assassination (April 1968), RFK assassination (June 1968), Malcolm X assassination (Feb 1965); Gulf of Tonkin Incident (Aug 1964); 9/11 Attacks (2001).

§13. Operation Northwoods (proposed 1962). The operation proposed creating public support for a war against Cuba by blaming it for terrorist acts that would actually be perpetrated by the U.S. Government. To this end, Operation Northwoods proposals recommended hijackings and bombings followed by the introduction of phony evidence that would implicate the Cuban government.

H. 9/11 Grand Jury in the works

In spring 2018, the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry — together with more than a dozen 9/11 family members and with help from AE911Truth — filed a petition with the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan demanding that he present evidence of unprosecuted federal crimes at the World Trade Center to a special grand jury. Then, in November, came the big news: the US attorney responded in writing that he would comply with the provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 3332 requiring him to relay their report to a special grand jury.

I. Truth and Reconciliation Committee calling for new investigation of 1960s political assassinations
Sixty prominent citizens are marking Martin Luther King Jr. Day by calling for new investigations into the assassinations of 4 men -- assassinations that changed the world: Malcolm X, JFK, RFK and MLK. The group -- The Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC) -- believes all 4 assassinations were the result of conspiracies that were covered up by the government. Members of TRC include Oliver Stone, Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, Rob Reiner, David Crosby, Mort Sahl, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and MLK's nephew Isaac Newton Farris Jr.

Notorious CIA programs

Operation PAPERCLIP – While other American agencies are hunting down Nazi war criminals for arrest, the U.S. intelligence community is smuggling them into America, unpunished, for their use against the Soviets. The most important of these is Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s master spy who had built up an intelligence network in the Soviet Union.

Operation MOCKINGBIRD — The CIA begins recruiting American news organizations and journalists to become spies and disseminators of propaganda. The effort is headed by Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles, Richard Helms and Philip Graham. Graham is publisher of The Washington Post, which becomes a major CIA player. Eventually, the CIA’s media assets will include ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service and more. By the CIA’s own admission, at least 25 organizations and 400 journalists will become CIA assets.

Operation MK-ULTRA — Inspired by North Korea’s brainwashing program, the CIA begins experiments on mind control. The most notorious part of this project involves giving LSD and other drugs to American subjects without their knowledge or against their will, causing several to commit suicide. However, the operation involves far more than this. Funded in part by the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, research includes propaganda, brainwashing, public relations, advertising, hypnosis, and other forms of suggestion.

Operation PHEONIX — The CIA helps South Vietnamese agents identify and then murder alleged Viet Cong leaders operating in South Vietnamese villages. According to a 1971 congressional report, this operation killed about 20,000 "Viet Cong.”

Operation PAPERCLIP – While other American agencies are hunting down Nazi war criminals for arrest, the U.S. intelligence community is smuggling them into America, unpunished, for their use against the Soviets. The most important of these is Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s master spy who had built up an intelligence network in the Soviet Union.

Operation MOCKINGBIRD — The CIA begins recruiting American news organizations and journalists to become spies and disseminators of propaganda. The effort is headed by Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles, Richard Helms and Philip Graham. Graham is publisher of The Washington Post, which becomes a major CIA player. Eventually, the CIA’s media assets will include ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service and more. By the CIA’s own admission, at least 25 organizations and 400 journalists will become CIA assets.

Operation MK-ULTRA — Inspired by North Korea’s brainwashing program, the CIA begins experiments on mind control. The most notorious part of this project involves giving LSD and other drugs to American subjects without their knowledge or against their will, causing several to commit suicide. However, the operation involves far more than this. Funded in part by the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, research includes propaganda, brainwashing, public relations, advertising, hypnosis, and other forms of suggestion.

Operation PHEONIX — The CIA helps South Vietnamese agents identify and then murder alleged Viet Cong leaders operating in South Vietnamese villages. According to a 1971 congressional report, this operation killed about 20,000 "Viet Cong.”

Operation CHAOS — The CIA has been illegally spying on American citizens since 1959, but with Operation CHAOS, President Johnson dramatically boosts the effort. CIA agents go undercover as student radicals to spy on and disrupt campus organizations protesting the Vietnam War. They are searching for Russian instigators, which they never find. CHAOS will eventually spy on 7,000 individuals and 1,000 organizations.

The CIA and Drugs - Nicaragua and Afghanistan

“The CIA has a long history of being involved in global drug trade in all parts of the world under the control of the US or where it has considerable influence. While a few cases have been investigated and exposed by journalists, the issue continues to remain in the shadows… The CIA’s history began in the 1980s. Drugs were seen as the quickest and easiest way to earn money to fund CIA proxies and paramilitary forces that served them, in different countries. Gary Webb, the brave journalist who exposed the Nicaraguan Contra drug trafficking scandal and was eventually driven to suicide by an extensive smear campaign by the mainstream media, described the process like this:

“We (CIA) need money for a covert operation, the quickest way to raise it is sell cocaine, you guys go sell it somewhere, we don’t want to know anything about it.”