My Production Journal

Part 1 (The 1st Journal at the Start of the Course):
Religion has, as I suppose it has for everyone, influenced my life a good deal up to this point.
Technically speaking I was raised Episcopal, from my mother’s side of the family. My father was/is non-
religious as he was raised in a highly religious family that ended in poor relationship with his parents so
he rebounded to the opposite end of the spectrum. Plus he is a philosophically-inclined artist, a group
who tends to not be dogmatically religious.
I went to Catholic school since I was in Kindergarten so I was exposed to a rather lot of the
Catholic religion. Same with my sisters (one of whom converted). As such I consider myself to have
experienced much of the everyday good and bad effects that Catholicism can have on an average
community.
The bombardment of religious doctrine that I experienced put me off to the whole concept for
several years. I was always scientifically (and probably a little philosophically) bent since I was little and
most of the concepts seemed ridiculous to me when I was younger. I would’ve considered myself at least
an agnostic if not an atheist.
Towards the end of High school I started to soften my stance on the whole idea of organized
religion. I started to see the charitable works that the Catholic community I was in was spurred to doing.
My high school in particular (I went to a Jesuit High school, Loyola in Los Angeles) did a lot of work and
had strong community services programs. I started to appreciate part of the community building aspects
of the religion. I still don’t consider religion being for me, but I don’t hold any of the anti-religion or
religion is fundamentally oppressive, divisive, archaic or backwards that so many non-religious people
do. I also think religion gets a bad rap in the media and despite my non-religious stance I will tend to
jump to its defense.
As far as the God issue is concerned, I suppose I’d say I believe but I wouldn’t consider that a big
deal or hold myself to be particularly spiritual in any way. Mostly my stance is that I try not to concern
myself with the idea, seeing that I am not going to arrive at any resolute conclusion and finding that the
value with the whole idea (for me at least) is the struggle of considering it. For the last few years I would
say that I have been very successful in that stance and I don’t see any philosophical conflict arising soon.

Part 2 (The Project's Conclusion): 

Individuals of Interest in Buddhist Economics

Payutto

Richard Layard

E.F. Schumacher

An Introduction to Buddhist Economics- Syncretism in an Increasingly Globalized World

          The topic of today’s discussion is the budding field of Buddhist Economics (BE). We live in very dynamic times in which the relationships between the major powers has deteriorated, the international economy has started to stumble significantly, the effects of industry have for the first time in history the power to destroy the world in which we live and the old status quo of powerful nations is evolving rapidly. In addition to these uncertainties, advances in technology and industry continue to shrink the planet in this era of ever increasing globalization. Cultures, religions and economies collide even more so and in more significant ways every day.

            As with the works of Thich Naht Hahn and those of the Parliament of World Religions (particularly the Global ethic document), we have seen earlier in this series (course) the effects of Globalization when religions collide and the religions’ attempts to reconcile themselves, their teaching, and the world to this new era. The Global Ethic document saw the attempt to reconcile the moral and ethical beliefs of so many different traditions while TNH’s work, Peace Begins Here, was an application of Buddhist principles to that ancient continuous conflict in Palestine between Muslims and Jews (while incorporating largely Christian nations and institutions) - a penultimate example of the new globalized world.  In the spirit of covering religion and its reaction to this new world, this episode will cover the application of Buddhist principles to the hitherto purely scientific field of economics as a new approach for dealing with the problems of this new, infinitely more complex world economy and community.

Currently many of the rules governing the collisions of these different societies are those of capitalism. We have witnessed many of the magnificent achievements of capitalism, but increasingly so, many of its failings as well. Capitalism was successful in the past, but the world has evolved (in large part due to capitalism) and perhaps now capitalism is not properly designed to deal with this new, globalized world economy. The principles of Buddhist Economics contend so, and are trying to develop an idea that could alter the approach to this new, globalized world economy.

            Capitalism is a highly successful idea, and the Western science of Economics has become enormously powerful in its ability to analyze the behavior of systems of commerce and trade. Yet these ideas come from a different world and a different time. It is not their structure that is the problem but, as BE would contend, their goal is the problem. The Jeremy Bentham principle, ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number’ has become something of a rallying cry for capitalism. Allowing free trade, free enterprise and deregulation would lead to the maximum growth and production of capital. Improving the state of the economy and improving the amount of capital available would lead to ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number.’ The ideas of capitalism have come very far and been greatly successful in maximizing the production of capital and society’s material wealth. The economics of freedom have fostered an economic explosion over the last 250 years unlike any other in history. But has this led to the ‘greatest happiness for the greatest number’?

            Capitalism was conceived in a different time. In the time from which it comes, even the wealthiest nations (such as England) were significantly poorer as technology and industry had not yet taken hold. Those who had more material goods generally had their essential needs addressed more satisfactorily. More wealth meant access to more land for growing food, better tools for more yield, and a style of life that addressed need more. In addition to this, the scale was smaller. Employee’s generally worked directly for their employers, all the members of the economy were part of the same culture and cultural heritage. The system was simpler and capitalism addressed the most pressing and obvious problem: that there wasn’t a enough of a proliferation of essential goods for life to go around and the means for society to live freely were not in great enough supply.  There was not enough material wealth for everyone to live happily. This provided a simple remedy (on paper): maximize the production (and growth of production) of goods or capital. Capitalism was a means for doing this.

            Yet this begs the question ‘does the increase of material wealth at the personal and social levels lead to the increase of happiness?’ The answer, as common sense would perhaps predict, is yes but only to a point. As a number of papers and books mention in this episode, Once a majority of material needs have been met, it appears that at the society level the increase in wealth can do little to increase overall social happiness. Buddhist Economics attempts to address this issue. As you will see in the Colin Ash article “Happiness and economics: A Buddhist perspective,’ Layard identifies seven areas that have a significant impact on the happiness and well-being of individuals: family relationships, financial situation, work, community and friends, health, personal freedom and personal values or philosophy of life.  Ash points out that the current economics models do not address all of these. The models address financial situation, provide for the increase in the number of jobs, argues for the increase of legal freedom and provides the framework for a medical system.

However, the field of Buddhist Economics is young and not with out its flaws itself. A fact that one should keep in mind during this episode. A few of the issues are that the field is still working out what to address in the current models as well as how to address it. Economic Theories are not of much use if they do not provide means for measuring the state of the economy, provide mechanisms to predict future results and behavior of the economy, provide solutions and methods to manipulate future outcomes, and provide ways transition to the implementation of the ideas of the theory in the first place. A theory on the scale that BE seeks is an almost preposterously tall order. The mathematical framework of current economic theory is intricate, complex and beautiful in its scope. While BE will undoubtedly be able to borrow and alter the large majority of its framework from existing theory, the framework of BE is yet still barely in its infancy.

This is not unknown to the proponents of BE and has seen some peculiar cases of syncretism as a result. Notice in particular the case of combining clinical psychiatry and its study of happiness with principles of Buddhism and Economic theory to create measures of national Happiness (such as the Gross National Happiness metric of the Nation of Bhutan).

Buddhist Economics seeks to close the rift between the social needs that the current economic models address’ and provides for and the problem of promoting society wide increases in happiness through the application of Buddhist principles. Over the course of this episode you will see arguments outlining the problems in today’s economic views and offering solutions in principle to remedy these. Whether the field of Buddhist economics fails or succeeds in its goals, at the very least it has yielded and shows great potential to continue to yield even more new and interesting applications of religion in the modern world.