Buddhism and Information Technology

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Buddhism and Information Technology

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Axiological Ethical Issues

• Axiological ethical issues
• Social impacts of IT
• Related to On the Internet
• Loss of the ability to recognize relevance
• Acquiring skill
• Loss of a sense of the reality of people and
  things
• Anonymity and nihilism
• Colonialization of consciousness through IT.

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Information Technology and Buddhism

• BACKGROUND PETER HERSHOCK Reinventing the Wheel
  A Buddhist Response to the Information Age
• Medium is the message Marshall McLuhans
  Statement (1964).
• Media has significant moral valence regardless
  of content.

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Information Technology and Buddhism

• Hershock concludes the fundamental task of ethics
  related to information exchange (media) is not to
  critique the content (although that may seem
  the logical critique), but to evaluate and
  provide alternatives to the history of progress
  through which the media have come about and which
  the media have, in turn, both sustained and
  deepened.

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Information Technology and Buddhism

• We may be debating questions concerning freedom
  of speech and the limits of privacy rights,
  however, it may be that we cant answer these
  questions within any framework of linear,
  one-directional sequences of causes and effects.
  And, we may be asking the wrong questions.

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Information Technology and Buddhism

• COLONIZATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS
• 30 hours of TV per week/22,00 commercials per
  year.
• Internet use90 Americans expected to be online
  12-15 hrs per week online.
• Americans average 60 of their waking life online
  taking attention away from families and
  communities?
• vegging out versus getting conscious.

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Information Technology and Buddhism

• COLONIZATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS
• Exportation of these practices is what Hershock
  means by Colonization.
• Material colonialism involved extraction of
  natural resources and breakdown of local economy
  and indigenous value system. (English extracted
  raw materials, brought it back to England and
  then sold cloth back to Indians).
• Colonization of consciousness (exporting our
  ideas and practices and extracting the attention
  of the people in our direction)leads to
  breakdown of their local communities and
  cultures.

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Information Technology and Buddhism

• COLONIZATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS
• Consider the possibility that all of the above is
  an attempt to end some kind of existential
  disconnect and that we are looking outside of
  ourselves and in the wrong place to resolve.

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Information Technology and Buddhism

• Buddhist response
• Four Noble Truths
• All is trouble or suffering (dukkha)
• Cause of Dukkha is desire for private
  fulfillment---craving and aversion
• There is a means by which such a resolution is
  possible overcoming craving and aversion gives
  rise to freedom from suffering
• 8 fold path leads to this freedom

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Information Technology and Buddhism

• The means by which such a resolution is possible
  is found in the practice of the Eight Fold
  Pathwe can dissolve the patterns of conditioning
  that bring about suffering by developing right
  view, right intention, right speech, right
  action, right livelihood, right effort, right
  mindfulness, and right concentration
• In sum, the root of Buddhism lies in developing
  skillful insight into the interdependent
  origination of all things, and through this,
  redirecting the movement of our situation from
  cycles of chronic trouble and suffering toward
  release from those cycles.

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Buddhism

• Ethical Norms characteristic of Buddhism are
  similar to other religions
• Upholds having harmonious relations between
  people.
• Compassionate care for other beings
• Self restraint.
• Economic justice.
• Non-violence.

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Buddhism

• Buddhism is different than other religions with
  respect to ethics in the following ways
• No supreme authority.
• Radical relativity.
• Interdependence of phenomena.
• Dependant co-arising and knowing.
• Everything arises and ceases in continuous flux.

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Buddhism

• Buddhism is different than other religions with
  respect to ethics in the following ways
• Endless flux and co-dependence where everything
  is interrelated and inter-influencing. To
  understand this phenomena is itself wisdom and
  will give rise to ethical behavior.
• Wisdom and Silla (ethical behavior) are like two
  hands washing each other---ways of behavior
  inform wisdom and visa versa.

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Buddhism

• Two views of reality around the time of
  Buddha--pre-Socratic
• Parmenides-world made up of discrete material
  stuff versus
• Heraclitus-the world is in constant flux

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Buddhism

• Characteristics of Power provide information
  about our underlying worldview.

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Buddhism

• Western Notion of Power
• In the west we view ourselves as separate
  things and we are concerned with what these
  separate things can do to each other.

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Buddhism

• Western Notion of Power
• Power over property or others (something you
  can win or loose) giving rise to
• Defenses.
• Fear (life forms need defenses but if you want
  something to grow those same defenses need to be
  able to break apart).

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Buddhism

• Western Notion of Power
• Power over property or others (something you
  can win or loose) giving rise to
• Defenses
• Nothing wrong with defenses. They are absolutely
  necessary to protect living things. However, if
  we want to grow it is necessary to peel off the
  old.

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Buddhism

• Buddhist Notion of Power
• Instead of seeing ourselves as separate things,
  see flows revealing patterns that self-organize
  Power with.

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Buddhism

• Buddhist Notion of Power
• Power with
• Power is an emergent (property) as we act
  together
• Power results from synergy
• To create power create connectivity

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Buddhism

• Sangha
• Radical inter-connectivity
• Power with
• Sharing
• Fundamental generosity-making sure everyone has
  enough

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Buddhism

• Suffering
• Delusion-- (ignorance)
• Is thinking that you are separate and hold
  yourself apart and aloof from web of life.
• Only see the parts and cant see the whole.
• We feel weak and vulnerable and we try to shore
  ourselves up with things and defense.
• Mutually reinforcing mistake about life.

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Buddhism

• Suffering
• Greed-the mistake to think that we need things
  for ourselves rather than for all of us
• Craving the need to pull things toward us and
  hold on to it for ourselves at the exclusion of
  others.

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Buddhism

• Suffering
• Aversion--strong defense and gives rise to hatred

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Buddhism

• Suffering
• Causes---power over lack of wisdom (cant see
  interconnectivity)
• Delusion-- (ignorance) is thinking that you are
  separate and hold yourself apart and aloof from
  web of lifeonly see the parts and cant see the
  wholemutually reinforcing mistake about life
• Greed-need to hold on to whats mine
• Aversion--strong defense and gives rise to hatred

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Buddhism

• Wisdom-Experience and Understanding Dependant
  Co-Arising or Interconnectivity
• Biology and system thinking changed the lens with
  which we see reality. Instead of seeing things as
  separate we now began to see things as flows of
  matter and energy and information and what
  appeared to be separate entities we began to see
  as nodes and patterns that self organize thanks
  to these flows.
• Open systems because they sustain themselves
  through the flow of matter, energy and
  information.
• Systems thinkers fascinated analyzing the
  principles and properties by which the flows
  generated these open systems.
• Example of the neural net

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Buddhism

• Following the 8 Fold Path leads to freedom from
  delusion, greed and aversion and to wisdom (mind)
  and compassion (heart) and the experience of
  radical interconnectivity.

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Buddhism

• Eight Fold Path suggests a way to behave that
  provides the optimal conditions to shift our
  thinking and resolve the Four Noble Truths.

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Information Technology and Buddhism

• Content and right speechbasis of this type of
  communication is compassionliterally, a
  relationship of shared feeling or emotion (is
  that possible in one way direction and/or online
  when the conversation is disembodied?)

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Information Technology and Buddhism

• Content and Right Speech continued.
• Studies show how when you put TV into community
  the behavior of children changes.
• Children dont learn to resolve trouble in
  liberating fashion.
• Rather, they may be learning to solve problems in
  ways that compound problems and increase sum
  total of suffering.
• Debate whether violence is indicator of what is
  inside versus causal connection.
• Buddha said what is and what is-not are twine
  barbs on which all human kind is impaled Then
  the question of what came first the chicken or
  the egg keeps us locked in suffering when the
  truth may be that neither is correct.

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Information Technology and Buddhism

• Right Viewleads to seeing our situation as
  interdependently arisen, as irreducibly dynamic,
  and as to some degree troubled and yet always
  open to revision (practice of three marksAnicca
  (impermanence) Anatta (absence of permanent
  identity) and dukkha (suffering) i.e. while
  media arises out of local and global conditions,
  they also influence these very conditionsmutual
  causation
• Impermanencethe emptinessshows that nothing
  ultimate primacy or status of an original
  causeso the notion as media-as-cause and
  media-as mirrorcan be seen as independently
  existing things only because of the temporal,
  spatial, and conceptual horizons that we impose
  on the emptiness or interdependence of all
  things.

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Information Technology and Buddhism

• Right View Continued
• Advertisingprimary focus of advertising is to
  foster sense of lack and wantingcravingroot of
  suffering often singled out by Buddha as root
  condition of suffering (along with lack of
  awareness of interdependent nature of all things)
  And it isnt WHAT we are conditioned to WANT but
  rather the ACT OF WANTING.

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Information Technology and Buddhism

• CONTEXT MEDIA AS A TOOL VERSUS AS A
  TECHNOLOGY--although we can turn off our computer
  or TV we cant put the media away like we can a
  hammer. Media will shape how we speak, whats
  popular, notions of good, how we work and
  live1. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AS A COMPLEX
  SYSTEM OF TECHNOLOGIES AND EMERGE AS PATTERNS OF
  RELATIONSHIP OR HISTORICAL PROCESSES THAT
  INSITUTIONALIZE VALUES ACROSS A WIDE RANGE OF
  HUMAN ACTIVITIES AND MORAL VALANCE.2. Merely
  focusing on the UTILITY of the tool, we ignore
  the tendency of it to deeply alter and
  institutionalize our core values.

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Information Technology and Buddhism

• Central Idea of Buddhism is to be able to be in
  accord with any situation whatsoever and to
  respond as needed (notice this is central idea of
  Taoism as well).
• A steady diet of mass media does not and cannot
  permit developing such virtuosity.

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Information Technology and Buddhism

• Idea of technotopia world in which no galling
  hardship, agonizing disappointments, shortages,
  and no sense of loss. End to trouble, as we know
  it. Also the end of the compelling dramatic
  tensions, collapse of our stories and dramatic
  entropycollapse of all differences that make a
  difference. Infinite variety would be possible
  but no compelling reason to choose on over the
  other.