The War Against Humanity
A war has been raging for decades. It is a war affecting or involving nearly anyone. As such, it could very well be the first real “world” war, not in the least because this war also decides the future of this world and everything that lives on it. There are relatively few “soldiers” fighting this war, however, and certainly on our side. Almost all of the violence – and certainly all of the structural violence – is inflicted upon us by the enemy. That enemy is waging a war against humanity. The enemy goes by many different names: the “super-rich”,...
On “Pessimism” and “Optimism” about Climate Change; and on SRM as a “Cheap Fix”
Let’s imagine the most optimistic climate change scenario for a century from now, without going completely bonkers. To do that, let’s first split up greenhouse gas emissions (CO₂-equivalent or “CO₂e”) into non-residual and residual emissions. The latter are emissions that are difficult or impossible to (fully) eliminate due to technological or other limitations. In our scenario, non-residual emissions — that is, emissions that we can actually reduce with current technology and without disastrous socio-economic impacts — continue to grow a little bit for a while (as they do in reality), but the curve starts bending down soon (which is a...
Universal Liberation
Taixu 太虛 was one of the most influential thinkers of modern East-Asian Buddhism. In 1904, at the age of 14, he became a monk at Xiǎo Jiǔhuá temple 小九華寺 in Suzhou, China. Soon after, he developed an interest in modern science, left-wing politics, and Buddhist reform. A decade later (partially due to changing political circumstances) he had himself sealed in a cell in a monastery to study Buddhist scripture and philosophy. After he left his cell in 1917, he revived a Maitreya Pure Land cult, but also continued working for the modernization and revival of Buddhism in China under the...
Carbon-neutrality is dead.
So, now what?
After carbon-neutrality was declared an official goal in the 2015 Paris Agreement it became fashionable for governments and corporations to declare their intention to become carbon neutral by 2050 or soon thereafter. This was never more than an empty promise, however. The deadline was set far enough in the future to make immediate action unnecessary and few if any governments or corporations ever accepted a realistic plan to actually achieve carbon-neutrality. A decade later, they have largely given up pretense. Some have officially given up the goal; others have silently voided or discarded it. Of course, carbon-neutrality by 2050 was...
If structural violence is so entrenched that personal violence is the only effective response, then personal violence is an appropriate response.
That (i.e., the title of this short piece) is really all I wanted to say, but probably, some explanation is in order. Let’s start with the notions of “structural” and “personal violence”, which were introduced by Johan Galtung in 1969: Violence with a clear subject-object relation is manifest because it is visible as action. It corresponds to our ideas of what drama is, and it is personal because there are persons committing the violence. […] Violence without this relation is structural, built into structure. Thus, when one husband beats his wife there is a clear case of personal violence, but...
Concern for Truth (New Paper)
Published today in Symposion. abstract — Davidson was right when he said that the idea of truth as a goal or norm makes no sense — truth is not something we can aim for, and whenever we say that we aim for truth, what we are really aiming for is some kind of epistemic justification. Nevertheless, the notion of a concern for or with truth can be understood in (at least) three ways that do make sense: (1) it can refer to a philosophical concern with the nature of truth, theories of truth, and related philosophical problems; (2) it can...
Western Buddhism as an Immature Tradition
There are Buddhisms for all four cardinal directions: Southern Buddhism, Northern Buddhism, Eastern Buddhism, and Western Buddhism. Southern Buddhism is the Buddhism practiced in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand. The term “Northern Buddhism” either covers everything else, or only refers to the Buddhism practiced in Tibet and Mongolia. In the latter case, Eastern Buddhism is the Buddhism found in Taiwan, Korea, Japan, China, and Vietnam. In the two-way North/South distinction, India is part of Northern Buddhism. In the three-way North/South/East distinction, on the other hand, India is missing, indicating that this isn’t a classification of historical Buddhisms. However, while Buddhism...
Buddhism and the State: Rājadhamma after the Sattelzeit (New Paper)
Published today in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics. abstract — Rājadhamma is a list of ten royal virtues or duties that occurs in the jātaka tales and that has been influential in Southeast Asian Buddhist political thought. Like pre-modern political thought in Europe — that is, thought before the Sattelzeit — Buddhist political thought lacks a concept of the “state” and is concerned with kings and similar rulers. Here I propose a modernized interpretation of rājadhamma as virtues/duties of the state. The full text (in pdf format) can be downloaded here.
Western Buddhism and the New Age
Western Buddhism has been heavily influenced by the New Age movement. In online forums it is common to encounter nominal Buddhists proclaiming New Age beliefs that are alien or even antithetical to Buddhism. Adherents of such ideas rarely seem to be aware of those ideas’ origins, however; nor of their problematic nature from a Buddhist point of view. And even less rarely will they self-identify as followers of the New Age. The latter is typical, however. As Margrethe Løøv remarks in a recent book about the New Age movement, “very few people actually denote themselves New Age — the preferred...
What does it mean to be a Buddhist?
In “What Does it Mean to Be a Marxist?”, Norman Geras distinguishes “three meanings of ‘being a Marxist’”: personal, intellectual, and sociopolitical. He writes that “for someone to be a Marxist, in the first – personal – sense …, he or she must (a) subscribe to a significant selection of recognized Marxist beliefs and (b) describe him or herself as a Marxist”. About the intellectual meaning he writes that “a person can work – as writer, political publicist, academic, thinker, researcher – within the intellectual tradition begun by Marx and Engels and developed by later figures”, and about the sociopolitical...
“Protestant Buddhism”
The term “Protestant Buddhism” was introduced in 1970 by Gananath Obeyesekere to describe a development in Ceylonese Buddhism that started with Anagarika Dharmapāla almost a century earlier. The notion was further developed in a 1988 book he co-authered with Richard Gombrich, but variants of the term have also been used outside the Ceylonese (Sri Lankan) context – in reference to certain trends in Western Buddhism, for example, as well as to the switch from “self-power” 自力 jiriki to “other-power” 他力 tariki in Japanese Pure Land Buddhism. The term is also sometimes used in a more general sense in reference to...
The Cluelessness of Longtermism
Longtermism is a variety of utilitarianism (itself a variety of consequentialism) that holds that far-future utility potentially far outweighs near-future utility, and therefore, that we should prioritize far-future consequences of our actions and policies. Utilitarianism is often summarized with the slogan “the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people”, but the term “utility” or “benefits” tends to be preferred by some philosophers (especially those who are close to, or have a background in economics). An associated, even shorter characterization of utilitarianism is that it aims to maximize utility (or benefits). Longtermism, then, holds that we should aim to maximize...