by Sarah Laeng-Gilliat

A localization revolution must not only support local political and economic units over global ones, but must also replace global technocracies and technologies with ones that truly allow for local control. A localization infrastructure consists of a means of production and social governance that are responsive to local communities and for which they can take real responsibility. Defining and promoting such a localization infrastructure must be a principal task of all who hope to halt the globalization juggernaut. – Andrew Kimbrell

The Buddha spoke of right livelihood. The Buddha used ﾒrightﾓ to mean in harmony with emptiness and impermanence. Our work in the world can reflect the interdependent and constantly changing nature of reality. E.F. Schumacher extrapolated from this and suggested that we can therefore consider what Buddhist economics would look like. We can extend this even further and propose that since right livelihood can lead to a discussion of Buddhist economics, so too it can initiate a consideration of Buddhisttechnology. For indeed our economics and the ways we produce and consume are connected with our technologies, the ways we do things, our techniques, even our technocratic organizationsﾑcorporations and bureaucracies. To explore economics is to delve into the structures of our society; economy and technology are two sides of one coin. This intimate inter-relationship was starkly revealed at an International Forum on Globalization (IFG) debate in which Joe Cobb, a proponent of the globalization model from The Heritage Foundation, claimed that perhaps globalization does not have to be inevitable, but the new technologies make it so. (IFG Newsletter)

Indeed, modern transport and communication technologies have not only facilitated but also propelled more and more trade over greater and greater distancesﾑgiving rise to larger and larger scale economic structures. E. F. Schumacher wrote that ﾒbefore these technologies, transport was expensive enough that movements, of people and goods, were never more than marginal. Trade in the pre-industrial era was not a trade in essentials, but a trade in precious stones, precious metals, luxury goods, spices and ﾑ unhappily ﾑ slaves. The basic requirements of life had of course to be indigenously produced.ﾓ The sudden cheapness of transport has meant that economic barriers such as limited markets and resources can be overcome. With greater access to markets and resources, economies of scale could be captured to a greater extent than they previously could be. And the doctrine of comparative advantageﾑ that it is to everyoneﾕs benefit to produce on a large scale that which one is best at producing, and then export itﾑ supported this trend. With technologies and doctrines supporting larger scale export-oriented specialized monocultural production, policies were written that strengthened those forces — policies such as reduced tariffs and quotas for traded goods, together with subsidies for such production. Indeed, there has been a powerful ﾒidolatry of giantismﾓ as Schumacher described it.

However, there were costs to this idolatry ﾑ costs that are becoming more and more apparent, day by day. Schumacher observed that the great mobility, or ﾒfootloosenessﾓ as he called it to distinguish it from the mobility that had already existed, ﾒproduces an appalling problem of crime, alienation, stress, social breakdown, right down to the level of family. In the poor countries, most severely in the largest ones, it produces mass migration into cities, mass unemployment, and, as vitality is drained out of the rural areas, the threat of famine. The result is a ﾔdual societyﾕ without any inner cohesion, subject to a maximum of political instability.ﾓ (Schumacher, 70) These forms of breakdown are similar to the charges globalization activists are making today.

These are problems that can best be addressed by first creating a human scale that will allow us to understand and respond to the dynamics appropriately. Schumacher explains, ﾒthe economics of giantism and automation is a left-over of nineteenth-century conditions and nineteenth-century thinking and it is totally incapable of solving any of the real problems of today . . . The conventional wisdom of what is now taught as ﾔeconomicsﾕ by-passes the poor, the very people for whom development is needed. . . . An entirely new system of thought is needed, a system based on attention to people, and not primarily to goods. . . what is unbelievably urgent now. . . is the conscious utilisation of our enormous technological and scientific potential for the fight against misery and human degradation . . . a fight in intimate contact with actual people, with individuals, families, small groups, rather than states and other anonymous abstractions. And this presupposes a political and organisational structure that can provide this intimacy. . . Therefore we must learn to think in terms of an articulated structure that can cope with a multiplicity of small-scale units.ﾓ (Schumacher, 74, 75).

More recent writers, such as Helena Norberg-Hodge, concur. She writes that from a Buddhist perspective it is incumbent upon us, if we want to be able to embody our Buddhist principles, that we counter the huge scale of globalization structures. She explains that wisdom ﾑ defined in Buddhism as the understanding of interdependence and the knowledge of the effects of our actions on others ﾑ necessitates smaller structures. How is it that we can really know the impact of our consumption, or intellectual property law, or foreign investment policy, to give a few examples, when their effects are felt on the other side of the planet? Even if we want to be compassionate, it is impossible when we cannot intimately experience the true effects of our actions. (Norberg-Hodge, 19-22).

With similar attention to scale, the International Forum on Globalization promotes the idea of ﾒsubsidiarityﾓ ﾑ that decisions should start with strong local institutions and then work up toward the regional and national and global institutions. Some decisions require the global level, such as many environmental problems which cross borders, whereas others can be taken at a lower level. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) also promotes policies that ﾒclose the gap between those who make the decisions and those who feel the impacts ﾑ new rules that could bring both authority and responsibility to the local level.ﾓ

Strengthening the local isnﾕt ﾒa return to the past.ﾓ As weﾕve seen it has most to do with where decisions should be made and this is an issue that should always be alive in societies. Furthermore, as the ILSR writes, ﾒThe new localism relies on some of the most sophisticated technologies (e.g. integrated pest management, flexible manufacturing, solar cells.) At the end of the 19th century, as we switched from wood to steel, from water wheels to fossil fueled central power plants, and from craft shops to mass production, technology seemed to demand larger scale production systems and economies. At the end of the 20th century, as we switch from minerals to vegetables, from fossil fuels to solar energy, and from mass production to batch production, technological progress encourages decentralized, localized economies.ﾓ Nor is strengthening of the local a form of isolationism ﾑ rather, it is in the spirit of Gandhi when he said, ﾒI want the cultures of the world to be blown about as freely as the wind, and I refuse to be blown off my feet by any of them.ﾓ Indeed, we are not against trade per se ﾑ we resist trade, and systems of trade, that are to the detriment of local production for local consumption. The ﾒidolatry of giantismﾓ favors export-oriented monocultural economies over strong localized diversified production for local consumption. In such a climate small producers have trouble competing with larger ones. The aim of ﾒlocally owned import-substituting economies,ﾓ (LOIS), to use Michael Shumans acronym, is rather to achieve a balance of strong local economies (with a strong local multiplier and many assets) with doctrines of free trade. It is up to us to gain control over these structures so that they serve life rather than themselves.

We do have the power to determine what scale is appropriate for which activity, despite the prevailing sense that the ﾒinevitableﾓ growth in scale of the economy and degree of interconnectedness are developments with which we cannot tinker. Many are resigned that large scale capitalism is inevitably out of anyoneﾕs control, even in the face of most acknowledging that the global economy is also out of control. All economists were shocked by how quickly the 1997 economic crisis which began with the depreciation of the Thai baht spread to other countries (including Russiaﾕs economy despite itﾕs lack of enmeshment in the macroeconomy), but people held on to the idea of inevitability. Consolation is taken in the ﾒnaturalnessﾓ of this system, and itﾕs thought that nothing can be done to regulate it. Of course regulated capitalism is possible! And, through tariffs, quotas, and other measures, we can affect the amount of trade that is conducted. History itself shows how governments can actively moderate trade. For example, from the 1800’s to 1920 trade steadily increased to 19% of the US GDP in 1920. After the war, quotas, tariffs, and capital controls were applied that made trade diminish so that in 1930 only 7% of US GDP consisted of traded goods. After WWII a concerted effort was made to reduce tariffs and barriers to trade as it was thought that the quotas after 1920 had squeezed the German economy and thereby contributed to the war. Thus the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was initiated as well as the Bretton Woods institutions. The 8th Round of the GATT1 contains very particular policies written by peopleﾑand they can be re-written and re-negotiated. This is exactly what the Shrink or Sink document, a document written by hundreds of Non Governmental Organizations (NGOﾕs) and signed by over 1000 other NGOﾕs, calls for. Tinker we can with degrees of trading and thus with scales of production!

The poorer half of humanity earns less than $2 per day, and in the ﾔ80’s and ﾔ90’s 400 billionaires owned more than the poor half of humanity. Yet in spite of widespread recognition that neo-liberalism has increased inequities in wealth and given rise to tremendous poverty, many can only imagine a solution involving more growth. Similarly, though our technologies have given rise to many crises, a technological remedy is all that can be imagined. The biologist Brian Goodwin has described how transgenic crops that are salt or drought resistant are thought necessary for marginal areasﾑareas that suffer desertification and salinization because of Green Revolution technologies!

The market, science, and technology have taken a sacred place in our lives and so we look to these forces for salvation to all our crises, even if they helped create them. Andrew Kimbrell claims that we have a new holy trinityﾑthe global market, science, and technology. He reminds us of Emerson saying that ﾒIn the absence of the sacred, the danger is not that we will believe in nothing, but that we will believe in anything.ﾓ Jacques Ellul, in describing the technological milieu in which we find ourselves says that earlier, during the period in which people were embedded in the natural milieu, everything sacred emerged from nature. Now technology has not only destroyed nature, but has itself become sacred, he says. There is something understandable in thisﾑif something has the power to overcome the sacred, this new force must indeed be sacred. So though the technosphere cannot meet our human spiritual needs, we are caught in a vicious cycleﾑthe less it satisfies, the more we clammer for a techno fix. Thomas Kuhn, in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions, describes how indeed when a paradigm is no longer descriptive of reality and more and more anamolies arise, those thoroughly enmeshed in the outdated paradigm cling all the more to it. This was particularly evident last Fall when a new round of business as usual was pushed through the World Trade Organization despite dissent from within and without.

From a Buddhist perspective, even elements as seemingly intractable as WTO policies are subject to impermanence. Despite tremendous resistance and desire to maintain the status quo, the global scale is proving untenable with breakdown at many levels and numerous trends pointing in a new direction. A return to the local level is occurring in many areas, and economies of scale are shrinking for many different reasons, such as growing recognition of the some of the costs of large-scale production. Looking at these processes can lead the way to changeﾑto finding ways of maintaining the benefits of the global while honoring the local. So economic realities themselves are pointing the way forward.

Science too is compelling change. The biologist Brian Goodwin has said, ﾒThereﾕs a sense in which 20th century science has given us three different wake-up callsﾑquantum mechanics, chaos theory, and complexity theoryﾑall of which say, ﾔthe world is not what you thought it wasﾕﾑthis mechanical world in which you can manipulate things and predict the consequences. That is very much in conflict with the web of relationshipsﾑand that web requires new forms of science, new institutions of science, new technologies, and new decision-making processes.ﾓ As an example of a new form of technology, he describes a method of keeping African corn bores away from corn that ﾒrequires local knowledge and local people rather than universal scientific knowledgeﾓ (such as a transgenic corn with an insecticide inserted into its genome). He describes how corn bores hate the smell of desmodiumﾑa cover crop that can be sown together with corn and that also fixes nitrogen in the soil. Simultaneously, napier grass is grown around the borders of the fieldﾑnapier grass being a host to the corn bore! Goodwin encourages more funding and research for all sorts of location-sensitive technologies like this one.

Buddhist Principles that can Guide Evaluations of Technology
We have seen that scale plays a central role in understanding crises and forms of human suffering. The more we achieve human scale, the easier it will become to apply Buddhist wisdom to the complex ethical questions surrounding todayﾕs scientific and technological developments, for it enables us to understand and see more clearly the range of consequences of various technologies. Below are a few initial thoughts on what Buddhism can contribute:

I. Getting Beyond the Western Nature-Culture Dualism
David Loy, in his article ﾒRemaking the World, or Remaking Ourselves: Buddhist Reflections on Technology,ﾓ discusses how most evaluations of technology are made within the Western dualism between nature and culture. We so often get caught in polarized discussions between people who are ﾒfascinated by new technological possibilities, which seem to allow us greater control over our own destiny, or we are suspicious of those possibilities and nostalgic for a more ﾔnaturalﾕ order . . . those who yearn for nature evoke the past, while those who privilege culture (including technology) have high hopes for the future. Then, as today, nobody is satisfied with the present.ﾓ We inevitably are caught if we approach technology from this dualism, for as Buddhism makes crystal clear, each side of a polarity only has meaning when the other exists.

II. Motivation
From a Buddhist perspective, the motivation for our actions is always a central consideration. The same action could have many different karmic implications, depending upon motivation. Today, much research and development grows out of a desire for profit, out of greed, as much as, or more than, out of a desire for well-being. For example, given that distribution of wealth is more the cause of hunger than lack of food, much research and development in biotechnology is not so much motivated by a desire to feed the world, as is often claimed, but instead by a desire for profit and control of trade in agricultural products.

Indeed, the very global economic structures demand some of the basest motivationsﾑto survive in the current climate a business must increase itﾕs bottom line and provide shareholders with very high rates of return. Could we not have a ﾒsteady state economy,ﾓ one that is not based on a need for growth, as ecological economists like Herman Daly have suggested? Would not greed decrease in such an economy?

III. Avoidance of Metaphysical Preoccupation and Ideological Responses
The preciousness of human birth can be seized by fiercely discriminating between that which contributes to awakening and the overcoming of suffering from that which doesnﾕt. The Buddha was not interested in speculation for speculationﾕs sake, but instead in practical ways to alleviate suffering. Life is found in lifeﾑrather than in thinking. Throughout Buddhist teachings one is encouraged to experience the truth of things directly, rather than through a mere attachment to views or opinions. This is also relevant to our technological society. We can be disciplined to refrain from scientific and technological pursuits that fascinate, but have little remedial promise. This is perhaps most striking when we consider the Manhattan Project and how it was so very exciting for the scientists involved and resulted in an extraordinary new destructive power. Robert Oppenheimer has said, ﾒWe always do what is technologically sweet.ﾓ From a Buddhist perspective, we also have the choice to avoid doing this. As Jacques Ellul has pointed out, cultures throughout history have chosen to use some technologies and to not use others, usually for religious reasons. In fact, to value innovation so highly and to pursue it so uncritically as we do is quite unique to modernity. To give an example, a Buddhist approach to technology would avoid resistance to biotechnology on purely ideological grounds. Indeed, there are plenty of good practical reasons to resist the vast majority of current biotechnological practices from a Buddhist perspective without resorting to ideology.

IV. Interdependence and Looking Deeply at Myriad Effects
Emptiness of separate self means that we are full of everything. Thich Nhat Hanh says that A equals not-A, which is to say that A is made of non-A elements. We are embedded in relationships of dependence with myriad beings and inextricably linked with the vast, diverse, and complex net of all beings. Given this, pursuing an understanding of isolated elements is extremely limited. Instead, a Buddhist approach urges us to look deeply at as many consequences of technological action as possible. For example, to consider the impact of biotechnology, it is vital to explore the interconnections between human health, environmental health, social issues2, economic impacts3, consequences for food security, and political implications4.

V. Wisdom, Compassion, and Responsibility
As weﾕve seen, a Buddhist way of being aspires after insight into how we effect our world. Once we have such understanding, a compassionate way of being is possible. We have responsibility for what we do.

In a world of specialization and even global division of labor, different parts of an action are often fragmented from each other. For example, in making a bridge, a geologist examines the site; a politician appropriates the funding; an engineer makes the design; construction workers do the building. In such a situation, who would feel responsible if the bridge were to break?

Jacques Ellull tells the story of the quintessentially irresponsible person. During the Auschwitz trials, a man who ﾒprocessed corpses through the ovensﾓ said that he couldnﾕt consider the people because he was so preoccupied with the limited capacity of his ovens and how inadequate they were for dealing with the large number of corpses he had in front of him.

VI. Simplify rather than Distract!
All of the wisdom traditions encourage simple living. The opposite of a simple life is not a complex one, but a distracted one. How many of the toys we give our childrenﾑplastic items that serve corporationsﾕ need for growth but donﾕt serve any human needs– are techno-distract-machines?! Does advertising and infotainment help to distract us from the dangerous tendencies of the global economy, creating vicious, self-perpetuating cycles? Jacques Ellul points out how many technologies require that we live by reflex rather than reflection. In driving a car, for example, reflex is essential. Reflection, on the other hand, is much more conducive to a contemplative life.

VII. Ahimsa (Non-violence)
The importance of non-harm in Buddhism cannot be underestimated. Given this, technologies for war and destruction can find no place in a Buddhist approach to technology. From this perspective, global trade in arms, though one of the largest growth industries, is categorically antithetical to Buddhist practice. Moreover, the many connections between globalization and militarization are untenable, from a Buddhist perspective. Could globalization continue without weapons and threats of violence? We know meetings of the G8, the World Economic Forum, the WTO, etc. would be almost impossible without police states and globalization of intelligence. With little sign of remorse, the New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman unabashedly claims not. ﾒThe hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonaldﾕs cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the first designer of the F-16. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valleyﾕs technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.ﾓ

VIII. The Intrinsic Value of All Life and an Elevated Sense of Human Nature
Following closely from the Buddhist emphasis on ahimsa is the value life not as a means to something else but for its own sake. Much biotechnology pursues life for profit, patentability, and particular body part rather than for the being itself. Vandana Shiva writes, ﾒGenetic engineering is a violent technology which allows the manipulation of life without concern for the implications for life forms or the environment. By treating living beings as providers of spare parts and useful components to mix and match, the integrity and autonomy of their lives are violated and suffering is increased. The duty and responsibility to respect the intrinsic worth of all species with whom we share this earth requires us to reject genetic engineered foods.ﾓ5 From a Buddhist perspective, we all have the capacity for becoming awakened. Though we are all capable of tremendous evil, ultimately, on the deepest level, we are Buddha Nature. When, through our technocratic structures, we see ourselves as mere consumers, or cogs in a production system, we are not living up to our Buddha Nature.

NOTES:

1. This round gave rise to the WTO and can be seen as ushering in globalization like nothing had before by reifying earlier trends towards globalization through formally institutionalizing doctrines and policies which in turn furthered these forces.
2. particularly in regard to eugenics
3. Martin Khor from the Third World Network has said that the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement is apt to lead to a three-fold increase in existing inequities in terms of fallen commodity rates.
4. e.g. the rights of people to know what they are eating and to have the power to decide what they want to eat
5. Indeed, Buddhists worldwide should support the global campaign against patents on life at the Rio +10 meeting in Johannesburg.

REFERENCES:
Ellul, Jacques. ﾒBetrayal by Technology.ﾓ (video)
Kimbrell, Andrew. Schumacher College Course, 1996.
Loy, David. ﾒRemaking the World, or Remaking Ourselves: Buddhist Reflections on Technology.ﾓ forthcoming in selected papers from the Eighth East-West Philosophers’ Conference in Honolulu, January 2000, ed. Roger Ames.
Norberg-Hodge, Helena. ﾒBuddhism in the Global Economyﾓ Resurgence, No. 181:19-22, 1996.
Schumacher, E. F. Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
Shiva, Vandana, ﾒGlobal Days of Action: Genetically Engineered Foods, Factory Farming, and Life Patentsﾓ, personal handout, 2-16 October, 1977.
Shuman, Michael ﾒAmazing Shrinking Machines: The Movement Toward Diminishing Economies of Scaleﾓ The New Village Journal, Issue 1.

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Sarah Laeng-Gilliatt holds BA in Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley and an MA in Socially Engaged Buddhism from the Naropa Institute. She has led on-going public education events in Santa Fe, New Mexico on “Spiritual Economics.” Also in New Mexico, she has pursued efforts to localize agriculture as co-coordinator of the Northern New Mexico Organic Wheat Project, and by helping to make a directory of farmers willing to sell directly to consumers. Sarah has worked closely with Helena Norberg-Hodge of the International Society for Ecology and Culture and has studied with Vandana Shiva and Martin Khor of the Third World Network at Schumacher College in England. She has edited several books on the roots of non-violence in various spiritual traditions as well as Nonviolence Speaks to Power: Speeches by Petra Kelly.

ReVision – A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation
Spring 2002 Volume 24, Number 4
Reprinted with permission of the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation.
Published by Heldref Publications, 1319 18th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036-1802. http://www.heldref.org/html/rev.html
Copyright ｩ 2002