Awhile back I wrote an article about E. F. Schumacher's theory of "Buddhist Economics." Schumacher (1911-1977) studied economics at Oxford and for a time was a prot�g� of John Maynard Keynes. He was influenced by Buddhism while working as a consultant in Burma in the 1950s. He foresaw that a global economy based on escalating consumption and "growth" is unsustainable and, ultimately, destructive of people and the planet.
Fast forward to the present --John Stanley and David Loy write about "Buddhism and the End of Economic Growth." They point to converging crises -- the financial crisis caused by the overreach of greed; the rapid depletion of fossil fuel resources; and global climate change. These three crises will force us to change our wasteful ways.
Citing Richard Heinberg (author of The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies), Stanley and Loy say that these crises "will compel our civilization to re-think the way it understands the relationship between the economy and the rest of the biosphere." Instead of being fixated on growth, we must instead focus on sustainability. They write:
"Buddhists should add their voices to other calls for society to go beyond the one-dimensional measurement of gross domestic product (GDP), which is merely a crude total of collective expenditures. . . . Today it is essential that Buddhists think critically and challenge the fetish of economic growth. Buddhist leaders such as the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh and Sulak Sivaraksa have been emphasizing this for years, and now the crunch has arrived."
This is essentially the same warning Schumacher issued more than 50 years ago. He criticized measuring success only by numbers, without regard for how growth is generated and who it benefits.
I read this morning that suicide rates have jumped in Greece, which is being slammed with economic problems now. I understand Greece is a lovely country with a mild climate. Why, really, would Greeks suffer deprivation unless something is seriously out of whack with civilization?
And of course, that goes double for the United States, a still-rich country that has managed so far not to completely deplete its natural resources in spite of the best efforts of moneyed interests to do so.� Yet these days most of us are in a funk of economic dukkha, because the economy is abandoning us.� In the haunting words of the Gospel of Thomas, the kingdom of God is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it.
I fear, however, that a large majority of people will have to suffer a lot more before they are willing to look up.
Related -- see Zen teacher James Ford's labor day sermon.
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