HELENA NORBERG-HODGE
BUDDHISM IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
Economic globalization endangers democracy,
community, cultural diversity and spirituality.
OVER THE PAST TWO decades I have had continuous contact with Buddhist communities, in both traditional cultures and the industrialized West. These experiences have made me keenly aware that industrial development affects not only our way of living, but our world-view as well. I have also learnt that if we are to avoid a misinterpretation of Buddhist teachings, we need to look closely at the fundamental differences between societies that are part of the industrialized global economy and those that are part of a more localized economy.
In the Buddha's day, societies were far more rooted to their place in the natural world. Economies were more localized - in other words, of a scale that made explicit the human interdependence with other sentient beings and the rest of creation. Relations between people and between culture and nature were relatively unmediated. Direct observations and experiences of the natural world provided the basis for ethical decisions in individual lives. The Buddha's teachings were formulated within the context of societies shaped by these direct connections to community and to the living world. Buddhism is, in fact, about life. It is about the constantly changing cycles of the natural world: birth and death, joy and sorrow, the opening of a flower, the waxing and waning of the moon; it is about the impermanence and interdependence that characterizes all that lives.
In the modern industrial world, on the other hand, complex technologies and large-scale social institutions have led to a fundamental separation between people, as well as between humans and the living world. Since our daily lives seem to depend largely on a "man-made" world - the economy, electric power, cars and highways, the medical system - it's easy to believe we depend more on the technosphere than on the biosphere, or life. As the scale of the economy grows, it also becomes increasingly difficult for us to know the effects of our actions on nature or on other people. These forms of separation stem from and reflect a fragmented world-view that is essentially antithetical to the Buddha's teachings. In fact, modern society is based on the assumption that we are separate from and able to control the natural world. Thus the structures and institutions on which we depend are reifications of ignorance and greed - a denial of interdependence and impermanence.
Engaged Buddhists (or Christians or Muslims for that matter) need to take on responsibility to examine current economic trends carefully, in the light of spiritual teachings. I am convinced that such an examination will engender a desire to oppose actively the trend toward a global economy and to help promote ways of life consistent with Buddhist economics.
THROUGH "free-trade treaties" and globalization, a single economic system is threatening to encompass the entire planet. At its core this system is based on a very narrow view of human needs and motivations: it is concerned almost exclusively with monetary transactions, and largely excludes such non-material aspects of life as family and community, meaningful work, or spiritual values. The focus on monetized social relations is echoed in the belief that people are motivated primarily by self-interest and endless material desires. Significantly, the Western economic system does not set about trying to temper our supposedly self-centred, acquisitive nature, but rather to exploit it: it is believed that an invisible hand" will transform the selfish actions of individuals into benefits for society as a whole.What does the globalized economy really mean? The president of Nabisco once defined it as "a world of homogeneous consumption" - a world in which people everywhere eat the same food, wear the same clothing and live in houses built from the same materials. It is a world in which every society employs the same technologies, depends on the same centrally managed economy, offers the same Western education for its children, speaks the same language, consumes the same media images, holds the same values and even thinks the same thoughts. In effect, globalization means the destruction of cultural diversity. It means monoculture.
Cultural diversity is a reflection of people's connection to their local environment, to the living world. Centuries of conquest, colonialism and "development" have already eroded much of the world's cultural diversity, but economic globalization is rapidly accelerating the process. Along with multi-lane highways and concrete cities, globalization is bringing to every corner of the planet a cultural landscape dominated by fast-food restaurants, Hollywood films, cellular phones, designer jeans, Barbie, and the Marlboro Man.
The push for a global economy is replacing locally-adapted forms of production with systems of industrial production that are ever more divorced from natural cycles. In agriculture this means a centrally managed, chemical- dependent system designed to deliver a narrow range of transportable foods to the world market. In the process, farmers are replaced by energy- and capital-intensive machinery, and diversified food production for local communities is replaced by an export/ import-based monoculture.
If globalization is bringing monoculture, then its most profound impact will be on the Third World, where much of the world's remaining cultural diversity is to be found. In the South the majority still live in villages, partly connected through a diversified, local economy to diverse, local resources: still connected more to the biosphere than to the technosphere. Because of pressures from globalization, those economies are being destroyed, and villagers are rapidly being pulled into the squalor of urban shanty towns. The Chinese government, for example, is planning for the urban population to increase by 440 million people in the next twenty years - an explosion that is several times the rate of overall population growth.
Development not only pushes farmers off the land, it also centralizes job opportunities and political power in cities, intensifying the economic pull of urban centres. Advertising and media images, meanwhile, exert powerful psychological pressure to seek a more "civilized" life, one based on increased consumption. But since jobs are scarce, only a fraction succeed. The majority end up dispossessed, living in slums. Despite the disastrous consequences, it is the effective policy of every government to promote these trends through their support for globalization.
WHAT HAPPENS when rural life collapses and people who once relied on nearby resources become tied to the global economy? Consider traditional architecture, in which structures were built from local resources: stone in France, clay in West Africa, sun-dried bricks in Tibet, bamboo and thatch in the Philippines, felt in Mongolia, and so on. When these building traditions give way to "modern" methods, those plentiful local materials are left unused - while competition skyrockets for the monoculture's narrow range of structural materials, such as concrete, steel, and sawn lumber. The same thing happens when everyone begins eating identical staple foods, wearing clothes made from the same fibres, and relying on the same finite energy sources. Because it makes everyone dependent on the same resources, globalization creates efficiency for corporations, but it creates artificial scarcity for consumers.
In this situation those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder are at a great disadvantage. The gap between rich and poor widens, and anger, resentment and conflict increase. This is particularly true in the South, where people from many differing ethnic backgrounds are being pulled into cities, where they are cut off from their communities and cultural moorings and face ruthless competition for jobs and the basic necessities of life. Individual and cultural self-esteem are eroded by the pressure to live up to media and advertising stereotypes, whose images are invariably based on an urban, Western consumer model: blonde, blue-eyed and clean. If you are a farmer or are dark-skinned, you are made to feel primitive, backward, inferior. As a consequence, women around the world use dangerous chemicals to lighten their skin and hair, and the sale of blue contact lenses is growing in markets from Bangkok to Nairobi and Mexico City. Asian women even undergo surgery to make their eyes look more Western.
Contrary to the claims of its promoters, a centrally planned global economy does not bring harmony and understanding to the world by erasing the differences between us. Uprooting people from rural communities by selling them an unattainable urban dream is instead responsible for a dramatic increase in anger and hostility particularly among young men. In the intensely demoralizing and competitive situation they face, differences of any kind become increasingly significant, and ethnic and racial violence is the all but inevitable result.
My experiences in Ladakh and in the Kingdom of Bhutan have made me aware of this connection between the global economy and ethnic conflict. In Ladakh, a Buddhist majority and a Muslim minority lived together for 600 years without a single recorded instance of group conflict. In Bhutan, a Hindu minority had coexisted peacefully with a slightly larger number of Buddhists for an equally long period. In both cultures, just fifteen years exposure to outside economic pressures resulted in violence that left many people dead. In these cases it was clearly not the differences between people that led to conflict, but the erosion of their economic power and identity. If globalization continues, the escalation of conflict and violence will be unimaginable; after all, globalization means the undermining of the livelihoods and cultural identities of the majority of the world's people.
WHY HAS THERE been a reluctance on the part of many Buddhists to address the disturbing social and economic impact of globalization? To my mind, the main reason is a lack of awareness of the way in which Buddhist teachings about the world are in fact about the natural world not about an artificially constructed "technosphere". The challenge for Western Buddhists is to apply the Buddhist principles, taught in an age of localized social and economic interactions, to the highly complex and increasingly globalized world in which we now live.One concept that can easily be misinterpreted is the Buddhist principle of interdependence - the unity of all life, the inextricable web in which nothing can claim a separate or static existence. Many of us fall into the trap of confounding this idea with the ideals of the "global village" and the border- less world of free trade. The buzzwords - "harmonization", "integration", "union", etc. - should not confuse us into believing that globalization is making us more interdependent with one another or with the natural world. It is instead merely furthering our dependence on large-scale economic structures and technologies, and on a shrinking number of huge multinational corporations. It would be foolish, indeed, to confuse this process with the interdependence described by the Buddha.
The Buddhist notion of impermanence can also be distorted unless we under- stand the fundamental differences between life processes and the global economic system. The Buddha's teachings are about change and impermanence in the natural world. We are taught to accept the ever-changing flow of life in the biosphere, the cycles of life and death, the impermanence of all beings. The changes precipitated by globalization, however, are based on a denial of the impermanence in nature observed by the Buddha. Megaprojects such as nuclear power- plants, dams and superhighways, are not a part of the flow of life that the Buddha taught us to accept, nor is the manipulation of genetic material through biotechnology. Instead, these are manifestations of a world-view which seeks to dominate nature, and which pretends that life can be held static, split into fragments and manipulated to satisfy the needs of a technologically-dependent consumer culture.
Two other Buddhist concepts are also misconstrued to support social apathy: karma, and the three poisons of greed, hatred and delusion. It is tempting to use the Law of Karma to explain the growing gap between rich and poor: if one is rich, one must have performed good deeds in the past. However, a deep examination reveals that the more immediate cause of social inequality is a global economic system which allows a few to prosper at the expense of the many. Rather than attributing differences in wealth to karma from the deeds of past lifetimes, we need in particular to acknowledge the implications of the urbanized Western lifestyle. The lack of wisdom and compassion inherent in this lifestyle is quite obvious: we in the industrialized parts of the world consume roughly ten times our share of the world's resources, often oblivious to the incalculable cost to all life on this planet. People in the West need to muster the courage to scrutinize our collective contribution to a global system which encourages exploitation and social atomization, and exacerbates inequalities and destruction, often out of sight, on the other side of the world.
The "three poisons" of greed, hatred and delusion are to some extent present in every human being, but cultural systems either encourage or discourage these traits. Today's global consumer culture nurtures the "three poisons" on both an individual and a societal level. At the moment, $450 billion is spent annually on advertising worldwide, with the aim of convincing people that they need things they never knew existed - like Coca-Cola and plastic Rambos with machine- guns. Before the rise of consumerism, cultures existed in which this type of greed was virtually non-existent. Thus we cannot conclude that the acquisitiveness and materialism of people trapped in the global economic system are an inevitable product of human nature. We need to recognize the near impossibility of uncovering our "Buddha nature" in a global culture of consumerism.Buddhism can help us in this difficult situation by encouraging us to be compassionate and nonviolent with ourselves as well as others. Many of us avoid an honest examination of our lives for fear of exposing our contribution to global problems. However, once we realize that it is the complex global economy which is creating a disconnected society, psychological deprivation and environmental breakdown, Buddhism can help us to focus on the system and its structural violence. The teachings can encourage an understanding of the many complex ways we affect others and our environment, and encourage empathy and a profound affirmation of life. Only by recognizing how we are all part of this system, can we actively work together to disengage from these life-denying structures.
Buddhism, in its holistic approach, can help us to see how various symptoms are interrelated; how the crises facing us are systemic and rooted in economic imperatives. Understanding the myriad connections between the problems can prevent us from wasting our efforts on the symptoms of the crises and help us to focus on the fundamental causes. Under the surface, even such seemingly unconnected problems as ethnic violence, pollution of the air and water, broken families, and cultural disintegration are closely interlinked. Psychologically, such a shift in our perception of the nature of the problems is deeply empowering: being faced with a litany of seemingly unrelated problems can be overwhelming, but finding the points at which they converge can make our strategy to tackle them more focused and effective. It is then just a question of pulling the right threads to affect the entire fabric, rather than having to deal with each problem individually.
AT A STRUCTURAL level, the fundamental problem is scale. The ever- expanding scale of the global economy obscures the consequences of our actions. In effect, our arms have been so lengthened that we no longer see what our hands are doing. Thus our situation exacerbates and furthers our ignorance, preventing us from acting out of compassion and wisdom. In smaller communities, people can see the effects of their actions and take responsibility for them. Smaller-scale structures also limit the amount of power vested in one individual. What a difference between the leader of a large nation-state and that of a small town: one has power over millions of faceless people with whom there will never be any real contact; the other co-ordinates the affairs of a few thousand people and is an active part of the community. The scale of the modern nation-state has become so large that leaders are unable to act according to the principles of interdependence, even if they wished to. Decisions are instead made according to economic principles - in the name of "progress" - often disregarding the implications for individual members of the society and for the rest of the living world.
In more decentralized economies and political structures it is difficult to ignore the laws of impermanence and interdependence. Being personally accountable to the community means being constantly in tune with its changing social and environmental dynamics. Since the consequences of any action are evident in a smaller community, decisions are more likely to be guided by wisdom and compassion. As difficult as it may sound, our choice as Buddhists seems evident: we need to help move society towards rebuilding smaller-scale social and economic structures which make possible a life based on Buddhist notions of interdependence and impermanence. It is helpful to remember that continuing the competitive race towards increased globalization and larger scale is far more difficult. In fact, the global economy represents an impossible dream, since it is eradicating the diversity on which life depends.
An important aspect of moving toward smaller-scale human institutions is reaffirming a sense of place. Each community is unique in its environment, its people, its culture. Human scale minimizes the need for rigid legislation and allows for more flexible decision-making; it gives rise to action in harmony with the laws of nature, based on the needs of the particular context. When individuals are at the mercy of faraway, inflexible bureaucracies and fluctuating markets, they feel passive and disempowered; whereas decentralized structures provide individuals with the power to respond to each unique situation.
Despite the many environmental, social and even ethical benefits that decentralized economic activity could provide, governments are blindly promoting exactly the opposite: massive centralization on a global scale. Since economic centralization is promoted in the name of "oneness" and "interdependence", one of the first steps we need to take as Buddhists is to educate ourselves and others about the mental confusion these terms provoke. By seeing education as action and promoting discussion and sharing information, we can remove the layers of ignorance that lead us to unwittingly support a system of greed and violence while we are striving in our individual lives to do just the opposite. Once we are more awake, we can join with others to pressure government for changes in policy. Since the global economy is fuelled by transnational institutions that by now can overpower any government, the most urgent policy changes needed are at the international level. The solution at this level is, in theory, simple: the governments that ratified the Uruguay Round of GATT need to sit down around the same table again. This time, instead of operating in secret - with transnational corporations at their side, they should be made to represent the interests of the majority. This can only happen if there is more awareness at the grassroots, awareness that leads to pressure on policy-makers.
Pressuring for policy change can seem a daunting task. Many today have abandoned any hope of meaningful political change, thinking that we no longer have any leverage over our political leaders. But it is important to remember that in the long-term, globalization benefits no-one, not even the political leaders and corporate Chief Executive Officers who are promoting it today. In other words, there are compelling reasons for everyone to abandon their blind adherence to the outdated economic dogma of globalization. Among its other effects, globalization is eroding the tax base and power of the nation states - and that means the influence of individual parliamentarians. It is also threatening the job security of individuals, even at the highest levels of the corporate world. It is also heartening to realize that the tiniest shift in policy towards curtailing the movement of capital and diversifying economic activity at the local and national level would reap enormous systemic rewards. Virtually overnight this would shift the economy towards fuller employment and truly free markets, in which stronger small and medium-size businesses have the opportunity to compete; it would also enable local and national governments to generate the taxes they require to fulfill their obligations to society.
As Buddhists faced with the reality of a global economic system bent on destruction, we have little choice but to become engaged. Buddhism provides us with both the imperative and the tools to challenge the economic structures that are creating and perpetuating suffering the world over. We cannot claim to be Buddhist and simultaneously support structures which are so clearly contrary to Buddha's teachings, antithetical to life itself.
Helena Norberg-Hodge is Director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture.
April 1997
