Comment 13 on Mindfulness

The price of knowledge indeed. I truly love the Internet, but books provide better context for knowledge.

Clearly I love brainstorming with you about economics. But I am well aware that mastery of the subject, even a tiny branch of it, requires great effort and attention. I haven't lent my attention nor expended the effort. So I'm sure I come across as sophomoric and seem to take cheap shots. I still think that ordinary people talking about important subjects like economics is a very good thing. It's just important for me to remember how little I actually know.

I came across a quote by Lewis Lapham this afternoon which made me smile:

An English professor who had marked one of my papers with an "F" because I had proposed an unauthorized view of a 17th century divine. In the margin of the paper, the professor had written, "I don't care what you think; I'm only interested in knowing that you know what I think." The message pretty much defined the thesis of a Yale education at the time.

Part of the impetus for taking the Buddhist out of Buddhist Economics is perhaps the hope that your work might be considered a part of economics and therefore paid some attention. But that's a hard row to hoe.

Speaking of Lewis Lapham, I had let my subscription to Harpers lapse, but re-subscribed and today both May and June arrived in the mail. In the May issue is an article by Wendel Berry, Faustian Economics: Hell hath no limits.

I don't know whether you used to read the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and if you did whether you remember Clarke Thomas? Thomas still writes for the paper as old as he is. I imagine "back in the day" that more journalists were like Thomas, but I suspect that like in all other endeavors the reality is that talent is rare. In any case I'm fan of Thomas because he seems to have a good eye for fundamentally important issues. And what he writes is a pleasure to read--usually will a local angle--well sourced and concise. Yesterday he wrote on peak oil, suggesting that city leaders had better pay attention.

I wrote to Thomas thanking him for the piece and sent him a link to Transition Culture. I think the Transition Towns model is really quite a significant recent development. Ever since I first started reading about it I've given thought to how what is primarily a UK-based phenomenon might be translated into the USA. It's not so easy and I'm fairly lazy. The suburban reality of most of America is really daunting.

I like reading Wendell Berry, but I've got to admit he's something of a scold. I'm afraid that my laziness isn't something recent. I was lazy as a kid too, at least not always so good at attending to the things I was supposed to. The result is that over the years I've become rather inured to scolding. Now, I guess, I'm lazy and thick-headed. Berry looks at the "unscientific faith" that Americans that somehow The American Way of Life is indestructible, and that as far as the problem of gas and energy goes, "science will find and answer." He thinks these beliefs "look like a sort of national insanity." I've got to admit he's got a point.

One of the aspects of the Transition Towns is how meeting the limits of oil and "powering down" is presented as a great opportunity to build the world we always dreamed of. I think that sort of positive frame is very helpful if for no other reason than despair easily feed apathy--a lazy man knows.

There's a adage--at least rock song by Timbuk3--that there are two medicines: laughter and tears. I do sort of bounce between the two, so I'm back to Berry. Here's bit from his article that speaks to the importance of mindfulness in economics somehow:

I am well aware of what I risk in bringing this language of religion into what is normally a scientific discussion. I do so because I doubt that we can define our present problems adequately, let alone solve them, without some recourse to our cultural heritage. We are, after all, trying now to deal with the failures of scientists, technicians, and politicians to "think up" a version of human continuance that is economically probable and ecologically responsible, or perhaps even imaginable. If we go back into our traditions, we are going to find a concern with religion, which at minimum shatters the selfish context of the individual life, and thus forces a consideration of what human beings are and ought to be."

Buddhist Economics it seems to me takes this consideration of human beings into consideration. Buddhism doesn't easily translate across traditions, but this essential consideration: "what human beings are and out to be" is not simply a Buddhist concern. So Buddhist Economics provides an example of how economics can take this seriously.