Here I endeavour to observe some specific aspects of the UN Millennium Development Goals in the context of Theravāda Buddhist philosophy. I hope to consider Kamma (S. Karma) as a situated and embodied comparatively ethical category in the light of the Pāli Buddhist cannon and the contemporary global environmental crisis notwithstanding contrasted philosophical revelation. Kamma has multiple senses in classical Buddhism and is one of its most misunderstood concepts. Even at present it may be the most controversial concept of anthropological intellectualism in religious history. Furthermore, how to analyze Kamma ethically in Theravāda Buddhism and how it correlates to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (UNMDG) would be expected to be scrutinized and elaborated in the philosophical mind.
It has long been argued in the tradition of critical social theory that modern societies are confronted with multiple contradictions and crises of ‘development.’ In both ‘developing’ and ‘already developed’ nations, one finds that the pressures of material and economic progress are in tension and conflict with the preservation of the natural environment and the flourishing of human and animal life. The avowed goal of individual nations and of the United Nations is ‘sustainable development’ in the light of the previous stages of unplanned and planned growth and its problematic legacies for the natural environment and social equality.
The idea behind ‘sustainable planning’ is to minimise environmental and human costs and damages while at the same time continuing to maximise increased production and exploitation of resources for the greater well-being of people: that is ‘maximizing economic value while minimising environmental impact.’
According to one interpretation, the principle of sustainability would allow, for example, the calculative resolution of the tensions of development according to a cost-benefit analysis of how much exploitation of resources or how many negative ‘side effects’ and ‘secondary’ consequences are permissible given the needs, expectations, and aspirations of growing human populations. According to this interpretation, issues of sustainability can be resolved through technical planning and steering.
As William F. Baxter argued in his defence of pollution for the sake of development, People or Penguins: The Case for Optimal Pollution, the good of the continuing existence of a wilderness or a species can be calculated vis-à-vis the benefits intervention in an ecosystem can have for human beings. Negative effects on an ecosystem, and the local humans and animals that depend on it, can be offset by the benefits to the general human population, for instance, forest clearing, oil drilling or gas pipelines can produce. If our ‘aesthetic’ preference for having cute penguins in the world does not offset the benefits to humans of sustained or increasing production, then there is no reason not to choose a certain amount-which Baxter describes as optimal-of negative environmental consequences for human material needs and comforts.
The technocratic or instrumental account of sustainability, which I have quickly summarized here on the basis of Baxter’s arguments, clearly presupposes an anthropocentric perspective in which humans stand as the arbitrators of value and lack of value. Thus, a large gnarly tree good only for the napping of wanderers, the chattering of birds, and the activities of insects is ‘useless’ in comparison with the employment opportunities and material benefits that a new superstore and parking lot could bring to the community. It has often been maintained in response to such human-oriented accounts that the recognition of interdependence based on the concept of dependent arising or dependent origination (P. Paticcasamuppāda, S. Pratītyasamutpāda) articulated in classical Buddhist texts can provide an alternative to the instrumental anthropocentric understanding of human and natural life. ‘Sustainable development’ could in this Buddhist context be more open to being oriented and shaped by movies that are (1) more broadly ethical rather than exclusively instrumental and (2) biocentric instead of anthropocentric.
The recognition of the interdependence between humans and non-humans, sentient beings and their natural world, might be a necessary condition yet appears to be an insufficient condition insofar as the ‘fact’ of interdependence can be acknowledged and nothing in one’s attitudes or behaviours might be different.
Mere interdependence and non-duality is compatible with the use and exploitation of what one perceives oneself to be at one with, since the anthropocentric instrumental approach in authors such as Baxter does not deny mutual dependence. Interdependence indicates a limit to the amount of pollution that humans can maintain for the sake of development. Likewise, praising naturalness and perceiving animals as models for human life is compatible with the domination of nature and use of animals.
Mimesis, which Adorno describes as the impulse to imitate that is constitutive of human imagination and reason, can copy and reproduce the natural in order to control and reshape it as the Frankfurt school critical social theorist has argued.
The writer is attached to the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Peradeniya