It will be unfortunate during our Think Sangha Seminar if we believe we are together to construct much the same building, but in fact the first is making a skyscraper, the second a pagoda, the third a sewage works, and the fourth is coursing in the Tushita Heavens. So the following is mainly about creating conceptual frameworks - a single building site on which we can readily work together.

The Basic Map of Engaged Buddhism
"Self' to the left of the vertical axis and "society" to the right; "diagnosis" above the (intersecting) horizontal line and "remedy" below. This gives four quadrants: top/left: diagnosis/self; top right: diagnosis/society; bottom left: remedy/self; bottom right: remedy/society.

The Buddhist Self-and-Society Equation
Explaining the self/society interaction is the unique contribution of engaged Buddhism and the growing point for Buddhist social theory. This contrasts with the traditional Buddhist view of society as no more than an aggregate of individuals. And on the other hand it contrasts with secular social theory as being essentially about social conditioning. Problems like "consumerism" or "violence" offer instructive examples of how the self/society process works.

In the first place, the self is at least in part a social construct. Each of us is born not only into precariousness of our naked existential condition, with its personal karmic and genetic inheritance. We also inherit normative meanings, socially appropriate feelings and behaviors, and a whole compelling social culture. There is a significant literature in anthropology and social theory about how self-identity is socially and historically constructed. Since this is at the crux of engaged buddhist understanding, I believe it is important for us to master this, and make it available as a resource.

Secondly, down through history, countless individuals have embodied Buddha's Three Signs of Being: insubstantiality (anatta), impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha), and have manifested the Three Fires of acquisitiveness, anger and delusion. They have embodied these "Fires" in social processes and structures, social cultures and institutions. They have done so for greater material well being (e.g. more and better consumables), but also to satisfy an insatiable existential hunger to confirm the self to the self and to others ("I shop therefore I am"). "The world grasps after systems", said the Buddha, "and is imprisoned in dogmas". The propensity to personal delusion is supercharged, legitimized, reinforced, cumulated, and depersonalized as the social karma of the historical process. Again, what has social theory to offer us which will enable us to elucidate more specifically (and explain more widely) the processes whereby millions of delusive selves, over many generations, shape and sustain a delusive social milieu?

Making Sense of History and Science
On the one hand we have to demonstrate to fellow Buddhists how social structures and institutions act as a seeming power unto themselves, a collective karma apparently out of control. It entrains decent individuals and groups in lifestyles which are ultimately hugely destructive to the planet and the mass of its people in terms of economic exploitation and structural violence. Hence we need to shift the locus of Buddhist morality from the individual-reaching-out-to-society (e.g. lifestyle reform) to the individual-in-society (radical structural change).

On the other hand, we have to demonstrate to most of the rest of the world that human history and society cannot be understood without reference to the human condition itself (and neither can the way out of our social and ecological predicament). Certainly since the Neolithic revolution minorities have squeezed wealth from subject majorities far beyond any reasonable material need. It has been used in large part to wage wars often on slender pretexts, and often of disproportionate destructiveness even for the victors. And again and again societies have crashed into the ecological buffers without being able to stop themselves (The "Easter Island syndrome"). How else can this irrational, bizarre and self-destructive chronicle be understood if not by reference to the human condition itself as a dysfunctional prime mover?

The Diagnosis of Consumerism
(a) NEEDS: The individual has objective material needs to satisfy, in order at the least to survive and reproduce. There are also legitimate filiative and other subjective needs to be met to ensure well being. But the struggle to support a delusive sense of identity through consumption we may term ->
(b) "ACQUISITIVENESS": By acquiring goods (including ideas, symbols, myths) we can strengthen our sense not only of personal identity but the status conferring identity of in-group membership.
(c) CONSUMERISM: Social structures and processes have evolved which support and stimulate acquisitiveness and which have a specific social culture called "consumerism". Thanks to a total consumerist culture, power, prestige, savoir-faire, seductiveness, a caring green image, or even expectations of spiritual enlightenment, can all be purchased along with the commodities themselves as fantasy reinforcements to self identity and a sense of belonging.
(d) Consumerism is a facet of the ideology of contemporary capitalism, outside of which it cannot be understood. Escalating technological development (automation) plus exponential investment capital accumulation have, for a global minority, shifted the emphasis from skillful work to credit-worthy consumption. The work is now done by automated processes at home and the intensified exploitation of people and their environment elsewhere in the global free-market.

Diagnostically, our focus of concern as engaged Buddhists needs to be on the self/social interface of this process: What is it that impels a person to consume even to the point of ruining themselves? How does society support and stimulate that impulsion? But if that is all we do, then we imply that consumerism is only about the consumer. So, also, what is it that impels the creation and aggrandizement of the economic system of which consumerism is a manifestation -- the supermarkets, the tourist promotions, the long range transportation, the automated factories, the cash-crop plantations, the logging of ancient forests -- and the supportive political and military powers?

The Alternative to Consumerism
Here we move to the "remedial" part of the quadrant, and to a self/society interaction in terms of alternatives to consumerism. However, it must not be forgotten that the remedy lies in exposing the deluded condition to full consciousness and understanding -- hence the value of vividly written exposures like that in Guy Claxton's paper "The Mindful Consumer: the Buddhist Psychology of Greed".
Ultimately the remedy lies in liberation from the restless and futile struggle to create a solid sense of self identity, since it is from this that delusive behaviors like acquisitiveness arise. For this a meditative "inner work" is necessary. Also helpful is sharing feelings and perceptions about acquisitiveness and its innermost roots in small groups while there is support and trust. We might usefully explore the possibilities of such small group work. From acquisitiveness this inward examination can lead to consumerism, which is the grateful response of acquisitiveness to a specific culture and the shopping system supporting it (One can be acquisitive, e.g. of time, without necessarily plugging into the formal consumer system, though it is probably difficult to avoid being influenced by an all-pervading consumerism). From there the attention could shift outward, to the effects of consumerism upon communities and changing social values. For example, what makes for a high quality of life, personally and socially?

But if the remedy lies in an inner liberation from the consumer itch, into what are we liberated? Freed of obsessive self need, we are freer to be of service to others. We are freed to restore the balance between working and consuming in a unified Right Livelihood. Livelihood means "making a living": that involves labor but also the fruits of labor, which include the fellowship of co-operation and sharing, the cohesion of community, the giving to others, and other manifestations of Buddhahood as well as grateful and reverent consumption (see Schumacher's excellent little book Good Work. Thus I prefer Right Livelihood to Right Consumption, since Right Livelihood both restores wholeness to our personal economy and points the way out of consumerism.

This takes us into the by now well established "New Economics", with its balance of inner and outer benefits. Attention shifts to an ecologically sustainable Third Sector of co-operative and community enterprise, voluntary welfare initiatives, credit unions and local exchange and trading schemes and the like. All these are essentially about serving oneself by serving others (as Gandhi put it). If they are to work well, and particularly if they are to prefigure a future green, spiritually informed commonwealth, then they will require the support of stable, caring people -- everyday bodhisattvas. History makes it clear that without such Brave New People, a Brave New World eventually proves unsustainable and falls a prey to ideology, power, lust, and greed. Cynicism, disillusionment and a sense of powerlessness follow -- like now...

Can engaged Buddhists, together with other people of faith., convincingly demonstrate why this happens and can they explain and demonstrate a positive alternative, in terms of both inner and outer endeavor?

Ken Jones is a founder and the present secretary of the UK Network of Engaged Buddhists. A long-standing Zen and Ch'an practitioner, he has authored The Social Face of Buddhism and Beyond Optimism: A Buddhist Political Ecology.