Chapter 9: Accelerating Innovation
How will the two antidotes of emptiness and compassion affect our capacity to control the world and our ability to improve upon this capacity, innovation? After all, the love cultivated would be an impotent love without the requisite means to actualize it. Furthermore, if, in the quest to renounce violence and cultivate love, we lost our ability to control the world or our drive for innovation, then we could be directly inviting the existential threats to civilization we aimed to contain. What is at stake is, on one hand, the creative perspective to identify innovations and, on the other, the motivational force to actualize these innovations and to continue engaging with the world through them. Without the latter, we would be idle dreamers. Without the former, we would be diligent in our stewardship of the world without the flexibility to adapt.
9.1 The perspective of Emptiness
Recall, the requisite perspective for innovation, as identified by Girard, is twofold. Negatively, we must see the world as constructed, malleable, and incomplete – a “minimal respect”[1] for humanity’s achievements. But we must also obtain a “mastery of”[2] of these achievements by, positively, seeing the world as worthy of engagement and capable of being understood. This section does not investigate if all Buddhist beliefs, if such a set even could be identified, are compatible with this perspective of innovation. I only aim to address, in alignment with the rest of this essay, how the antidote of emptiness and compassion may or may not be conducive for innovation.
We begin with emptiness. Given that emptiness is prima facie a negative statement negating a solid, reified ontology, it should come as no surprise that it produces a constructed, malleable picture of the phenomenal world as demanded by the negative perspective. What this perspective warns us against is an outlook that sees the world and its processes as permanent, sacred, or immutable. Through its negating force and an emphasis on the ontological lack of phenomena, emptiness dissolves this delusion by showing how nothing is solid and independent from causes and conditions, mereological dependencies, and conceptual projections.
But what about the positive perspective? After all, if the world lacks intrinsic existence, what reasons do we have to take it seriously, let alone learn about and engage with it? The nihilistic and escapist connotations of emptiness are hard to resolve until we uncover its positive formulation lurking right beneath the negative surface. To say that phenomena do not exist independent from causes and conditions, mereological dependencies, and conceptual projections is to say, once we remove the double negation, that they do exist dependent upon causes and conditions, mereological dependencies, and conceptual projections. This latter formulation is termed dependent origination, and it provides a positive ontology of phenomena.[3] The equivalence of emptiness with dependent origination is an argumentative move made by the Tibetan master Tsong Khapa to rescue his intellectual climate from the extremes of negation and nihilism.[4] [5]
By reframing the negative into a positive, Tsong Khapa wanted to provide us license to reengage with the phenomenal world. To call the phenomenal realm empty connotes, even if it does not intend, a rejection of it. Framed in the negative, we naturally but mistakenly conclude, due to our yearning for intrinsic existence that the phenomenal is lacking and unworthy because it lacks intrinsic existence. One might feel an urge to renounce and escape from this ontologically deficient realm. But that would be to make the mistake of thinking only the intrinsically existing is worthy of engagement.
Tsong Khapa's positive formulation, implicitly affirms the worthiness of that which exists non-intrinsically. Emptiness claims that phenomena do not have intrinsic existence. Dependent origination claims that phenomena do exist upon certain dependencies. Indeed, no new information is provided, but the emphasis has changed drastically from lack to malleability. It is no longer about how phenomena are deficient in their ontology but the conditions that bring them into existence. Instead of escaping a reality that is lacking, we are given license to engage with the world and figure out the specific dependencies that would result in a better phenomenal reality. Therefore, alongside this license to engage, dependent origination also contains an inquiry into the conditions and laws that govern this rescued reality. One Buddhologist explains:
The standard formulation of this doctrine, occurring frequently in the Pāli canon and quoted countless times in canonical literature, is “when this arises, that arises; when this does not occur, that does not occur.” That is, dependent origination is spelled out as a kind of brute regularity, and brute regularity is taken to characterize reality quite generally. The world is not random; it can be characterized by laws.[6]
Within the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness, we find both perspectives for innovation. In its negative form, emptiness dissolves the solidity and immutability that is so detrimental to innovation. In its positive form, dependent origination provides us license to engage with reality and the imperative to understand its workings. To be sure, one can realize the emptiness of phenomena and still believe that certain aspects of a system are immutable. One may conclude, as Girard has, that unless there is a drastic change to the human psyche, violence and vanity will be a permanent part of human society. Clearly emptiness at the base-level of phenomena does not prevent one from taking on a non-innovative perspective – sometimes warranted, sometimes not – for the various systems which phenomena constitutes. What I do hope to have shown is that emptiness as a fundamental outlook – with its refusal to reify and the subsequent inquiry into dependencies – is aligned with the innovative perspective outlined by Girard. Furthermore, emptiness is a perspective all the more powerful as it is not only reflectively held but drilled into one’s cognitive reflexes through meditation.
9.2 Compassion as Motivation
Thus far my discussion has focused on how emptiness furnishes one with a creative perspective – reflective and reflexive – conducive to innovative insights. But what about the source of motivation to generate these insights in the first place, to actualize them in concrete systems, and, for the large part of the population who do not directly engage in innovation, to productively engage with these systems. Even if one believes that, through continued cultivation, we can transform our psyche such that compassion is our fundamental orientation, one can still doubt whether such an orientation has the requisite motivational forces necessary for sustained innovation and engagement with the world.
After all, a skeptic could remind us that it was the selfish motivators in object-competition and mimetic rivalries that drove modern innovation. Our public virtue does not have its roots in compassion but private vice. As a commentator points out, it is precisely the inflammation of mimetic rivalries creatively channeled by the market which has become “an engine of prosperity.”[7] To be sure, this is precisely what makes a resolution to Girard’s modernity so difficult. Violence and innovation stem, in large part, from the same psychological drive of metaphysical desire. What is needed isn’t only a removal of shame and, thus, metaphysical desire, but also to replace it with, speaking analogously, an alternative fuel source.
A skeptic would object: even if shame and metaphysical desire could be removed by the processes I have proposed, to think that metaphysical desire could be replaced as a motivating fore is to fail to recognize how reliable it is as a motivator.
It is reliable, first and foremost, because it is so flexible. Unlike simpler modes of selfishness – such as taking sexual advantage of another or stealing their property – which can only take on limited forms, metaphysical desire is a private vice that can take on infinite forms, even that of private virtue. We can imitate the whole spectrum of human actions and commitments depending on our model. In this view, we can imagine entrepreneurs benefiting society through innovation not because they seek money or even recognition but because they are mediated by the exemplar of Steve Jobs. We can picture doctors saving countless patients motivated in no small part – although nonetheless unconsciously – by their desire to remove their own shame. We can point to academics making groundbreaking discoveries because they objectified themselves into their work – by perfecting their theories, they inch closer to metaphysical autonomy. If channeled properly, metaphysical desire can take on flexible forms that are incredibly productive for society.
But it is not only society that can benefit. Metaphysical desire is reliable because, secondly, it can hand out legitimate rewards to the desiring subject. This may be puzzling given my numerous claims on the impossibility of its satisfaction. Indeed, metaphysical desire will always be a failure according to its immanent standards, but it can also hand out instrumental rewards along the pursuit. First, mediation can direct us to experiences that are incredibly enjoyable and meaningful even though it does not contain everything that we had hoped for. One may, invited by the lie of metaphysical desire, work one’s way into a particular professional position that, despite its metaphysical disappointments, nonetheless confers legitimate experiential rewards such as friendship or a sense of accomplishment that would have been unreachable without the seduction of a falsehood. Second, and more internally to the structure of metaphysical desire, the very pursuit of an ultimate goal may help orient the subject and even offer a sense of meaning. Even though this meaning and orientation has, at its core, a sense of shame and is ultimately deceitful, it may nonetheless be preferable to the boredom, nihilism, and disorientation that awaits us without it.
Thirdly, metaphysical desire is such a reliable motivator because it is unending. The qualities of metaphysical desire that render it chronic and compulsive – impossibility, deceitfulness, relativity – are also what makes it lasting. Because of its impossibility and deceitfulness, we can always count on the human subject to be a striving and active subject. And because of its relativity, we can be sure that this subject will not be content with the status quo and, instead, constantly seek new ways to improve and standout, the side effect of which could be continued progress.
Lastly, metaphysical desire is reliable because it is so strong. The last two qualities that make it so untamable – its enormous strength and the fact it cannot be governed by reason – are often demanded by progress, especially when that progress seems to require a superhuman will and courageousness that trumps the heed of reason.
Such a skeptic would conclude that the most selfish drive – what could be more self-oriented than the state of one’s being – can not only be extremely beneficial to others but also be so at an enormous cost to oneself. Despite the instrumental rewards, metaphysical desire is ultimately disappointing after all. Under this view, metaphysical desire, when channeled properly to serve the ends of society, is oddly self-sacrificing even though the subject never intended it to be so. It seems, then, that societies should not help its citizens wane off this drive, as I have suggested, but to encourage it and direct it towards productive models.
This line of thinking raises valid objections but suffers from two major problems. First, even if such a society were possible, it would not be desirable. While metaphysical desire does confer legitimate rewards upon the subject both instrumentally and immanently, it pales in comparison to the degree of shame and disappointment when one’s metaphysical ambitions are inevitably thwarted. To be sure, by removing metaphysical goals and experiences, we undeniably remove a species of human good that is not recovered. This is not a pareto-efficient move, and we must not fool ourselves into thinking otherwise. There is a certain thrill at the peak of metaphysical accomplishment, an adrenaline rush to feeling like god in a Roman Triumph, and a glory to uttering “L'etat c'est moi” that we must undeniably recognize as a species of good which is not preserved. But that does not mean there are no strong reasons to wane off this drive. As an analogy: to the drug-addict, we do not try to help them by arguing that the extreme moment of pleasure isn’t enjoyable, nor that it will be preserved in the sober life, but by appealing to the overall life of degeneracy that this extreme moment inevitably leads to. Waning off of drugs is not a pareto-efficient move either in the economy of human goods, but one we ought to make nonetheless. In like manner, we do not deny the intensity and momentary satisfaction of the highs experienced by the metaphysical-addict but appeal to the negative outcomes this overall orientation of life inevitably leads to. Whatever instrumental and immanent rewards metaphysical desire may confer, subjects are almost always better off long term without them.[8]
Beyond the concerns of the subject, metaphysical desire can, I concede, result in societal benefit. Indeed, likely a large part if not most of humanity’s greatest achievements are attributable to it. But it is not a reliable fuel source – usually producing more disaster than good – simply because societal benefit is not its aim. Second, and more fundamentally, this path of inflaming metaphysical desire is closed off to us. For all the reasons mentioned in our reconstruction of Girard’s modernity, to inflame metaphysical desire now is to invite rivalry and violence. It is not possible, at least in internal mediation, to be sustainably mediated by a “productive” model. Rivalry too often leads us astray into vain pursuits.
9.2.1 Wheel-Turning Monarch
With that said, given how much of history Girard identifies as a product of mediation and how many of our current institutions Loy sees as being powered by lack,[9] it is hard to even conceive of an alternative. The philosopher who wishes to address the skeptic’s valid concerns, and replace metaphysical desire with compassion in a societal-wide solution faces an epistemic roadblock. “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings at the end of dusk.”[10] Our contingent circumstance is so different from that of such a utopia that it is impossible to determine its plausibility. That is not to say that it is impossible to actualize. But to even conceive of this actuality now, we would need to make so many assumptions, reconsider so many institutions, and inhabit a frame of mind so alien to our own that it would be hard to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Perhaps, in the journey to actualize this ideal, we find that, given the rigorous demands of meditation, only a select few can be meaningfully freed from metaphysical desire and still engage with society. Perhaps, by encouraging transcendent ideals to be in such close proximity to worldly life and its trappings, we destroy the legitimacy and integrity of the former.[11] Perhaps, with the size of the societies that we have, mimetic illusions and dogmatic falsehoods alone can unify us.[12] Perhaps, we are just inviting people to disguise their self-interested pursuits in transcendent, grandiose, and altruistic language which leads to more perversion. Philosophy can only say so much beforehand.
Where philosophy still has ground left to cover are the specific challenges and synergies a single individual may face in trying to cultivate compassion while participating in the historically-specific channels of innovation we have today. This methodological turn away from the social to the individual is indeed motivated by the epistemic limitations just discussed. But it is also motivated by two strategic concerns.
First, if we take Girard’s psychological claims seriously, then a large portion of western political philosophy – which I will use Marx as a chief exemplar – is confused about the levers of societal progress. If alienation, vanity, fetishization, suffering, and deceit are the natural consequences of social interaction produced by innate psychological mechanisms, then utopia cannot be established by only changing the political-economic base. For example, if fetishization – imbuing metaphysical value into objects – is part of our constitution, then Marx, while warranted in identifying production relations as that which channels fetishization, was incorrect in concluding that they were also its chief cause.[13] Indeed, as history has revealed, the negative drives Marx identified in capitalism were often just redirected, sometimes in more grotesque ways, to a different channel in the communist “utopias” of the 20th-century. In like manner, the tools of emancipation – chief among them private property and political equality – that liberal thinkers used to fight the oppression of tyranny have been seen by some to be, in some sense, oppressive.[14] Similarly, pioneers of the internet had hoped it would bring about a free, connected, and truthful world. Social media platforms, in recent years, have proved to be just as much vessels of surveillance, division, and falsehoods. We should always be cautious of the extent to which changing external structures of the world can alleviate its evils.
Under the light of this – granted uncharitable but hopefully revealing – figure that I am constructing, the history of western political philosophy has been a three-millennia-long search for scapegoats and gods. Identifying the political structures, economic relations, and cultural norms that are either the sole cause of our miseries or will bring about ultimate salvation – scapegoats and gods are identified one after the other in this intellectual victimage mechanism. The fundamental error is to confuse avenues that merely channel our collective evils as their root cause. When one does this, one usually invites the same evils to come back through new channels.
The Girardian lens – which sees alienation, vanity, fetishization, suffering, and deceit as constitutive of social interaction – reveals the tradition of political philosophy to be just rubbing ointment on the skin of society without treating the deeper psychological wounds. Furthermore, without understanding the true cause of our ills, emancipatory and justice-seeking ideologies – in so far as justice means to undifferentiate and to make equal – only create societies more susceptible to mimetic contagion. This is not to disregard the meaningful progress that political theories and movements have made nor to underestimate how much the political-economic base can affect our psychology. Certainly, the political-economic organization may be so toxic that no meaningful progress can be achieved before they are transformed. And, of course, at a certain scale and to achieve a certain degree of psychological transformation, it is inevitable that this base must also change. My point here, however, is this. If our societal ills are indeed created by these psychological mechanisms constitutive of humanity, no societal reorganization – no change in external structures – will ever resolve them. We need to tackle these mechanisms directly. The Girardian and Buddhist approach to political philosophy is to always have the psychological subject front and center. The only effective antidote must, at its core, be a psychological one.
The second strategic reason to investigate the possibilities available to an individual today – rather than, say, how society may be adapted to better suit compassion – is that to work towards this, granted, utopian ideal while not ignoring all the possibilities of failure listed above, it is best to proceed incrementally. A necessary first step is to have an individual or a few individuals realize these psychological transformations while remaining deeply engaged in society and its channels of innovation, at which point, they would be at a better vantage point to determine the next step. Indeed, due to either our contingent historical circumstance or the fundamental limitations of human nature, we may come to find that this path is only available for a select few. But we shouldn’t even take this achievement, however modest, as a complete failure. In his book Psychopolitics, Jean-Michel Oughourlian, Girard’s collaborator and co-creator of mimetic theory, reminds us of the considerable influence just one enlightened leader can have on society:
There is perhaps only one solution left, one that Plato and a few other philosophers imagined long ago: a leader or a politician who is an enlightened sage and who guides his people along the road to wisdom. And what does wisdom mean in the case that concerns us? It means waging a struggle against oneself. … By encouraging people to overcome their rivalries, to struggle with themselves and to transform themselves individually, I think that it would be possible to channel and harness violence, but this requires great wisdom at the head of the state, which in turn implies a great deal of personal effort, a type of asceticism.[15]
We must now turn to an investigation of the specific challenges and synergies such an individual will face. The same contingent circumstance – the world being driven by metaphysical desire – that make a compassion-driven society so hard to imagine is also the greatest challenge that will face the individual. The worry is threefold. First and most fundamentally, certain environments may explicitly encourage specific interpretations of the world that are so antagonistic to compassion as to render its cultivation near impossible. Imagine the case of a wartime general who conceives of the enemy – and has good reasons to do so – as a threat with opposed interests, as an object to be tracked and analyzed, and as an alien to be expelled and annihilated. More common and less extreme examples of this are perhaps business, athletic, and academic environments where one must hold a cautious, if not directly antagonistic, view towards one’s competitors. Environments like these and attitudes like such aren’t bad per se – they have been a necessary component of strong and independent societies – and the cultivation of compassion is not impossible within them. But being inundated with and forced to inhabit perspectives that are so antagonist will be a hinderance to cultivating compassion and may prove a challenge too great for most. Those who remain in power will cease to be compassionate.
Second, the very logic of certain environments may punish precisely those individuals who have managed to cultivate a considerable degree of compassion. Imagine the same general refusing to use biochemical weapons out of humanitarian principles and, as a result, losing to an opponent without such concerns. The nature of certain environments is to, in a Darwinian fashion, render the compassionate extinct. Those who remain compassionate will cease to be powerful.
Third and elaborating on the first point: there may be subtle mechanisms which thwart the development of compassion. For example, an environment may be so infected with mimetic contagion that members do not have any headspace to think about anything but metaphysical rewards. Consider a reality show participant whose every move is being judged by millions, whose peers are almost exclusively concerned with fame and, in turn, invite the participant to imitate their desires. Even in environments without the first two qualities, there might be such a strong economy between esteem – in this case, fame – and metaphysical autonomy as to drown out any physical concerns whatsoever, including the cultivation of compassion. We must not underestimate the vast array of mechanisms that can encourage the selfish pursuit of metaphysical autonomy and all the innocuous forms they can take. One such form is romantic pursuits. The basic idea is this: we tend to desire our romantic interests more than others because of some hard to articulate allure. Naturally, we wish to be desired this way in reciprocation. We then conceive of ourselves as and try to be “more than others” with an “allure” of our own. It should come as no surprise now that this urge often conceals within it a pursuit of metaphysical autonomy detrimental to compassion.[16] The danger in both examples I have provided is being exposed to an exaggerated sense of esteem. Indeed, esteem – both too much and too little of it – is what the individual should be most cautious of as an inhibitor of cultivating compassion.
But by outlining the characteristics of environments that would pose a significant challenge to cultivating compassion, we also get an idea of the qualities for synergistic environments. Such an environment should encourage one to see the interests of others as in harmony with or, at least, not antagonistic to one’s own. Such an environment should reward or, at the very least, not punish acts of compassion. And such environments should be metaphysically-sober; that is to say, not suffer from an overdose or deficiency of esteem. Indeed, not all channels of innovation in our contingent historical circumstance fall under this criteria. But now that we have presented these criteria explicitly as a conscious and important choice, it provides individuals with some degree of freedom to choose and construct their environments. The author, cautious of the bondage of esteem, may choose to publish to a more limited audience. The entrepreneur, heedful of toxic company culture, may prioritize job candidates with certain dispositions.
There is another reason to be hopeful: compassion is a complete source of motivation. Its use and cultivation are not limited to more apparent manifestations. One is motivated by compassion not only in instances when one is directly helping another. If that were the case, the compassionate would be condemned to a frenzied hurry of addressing the needs of everyone else without time for their own development. Recall, compassion contains the imperative to act. Actions require, to a varying degree, resources, skills, and dispositions. Compassion, then, is also responsible for motivating, at a deeper level, these seemingly self-centered developments which are intended for other-focused ends.[17] In other words, compassion is only genuine if it contains a commitment to action, a commitment that cannot be fulfilled if one does not spend considerable time working on one’s own capacities.[18] In fact, many Buddhist sources are more critical of those who only seek to benefit others than those who only seek to benefit themselves (of course, both are inferior to those who aim to benefit all) for the simple reason that by seeking to help others without developing the abilities to do so, no one benefits.[19] The completeness of compassion as a source of motivation opens up the possibility of it motivating and, thus, being cultivated by a wide array of actions. It is not as if only a nurse in an emergency room has the conditions to use and develop compassion. By setting the aim of one’s self-development to the benefit of others, even, say, reading philosophy on one’s own time is an adequate channel of developing and practicing compassion. Even the writing of this project, presents me with a choice. I can choose between being motivated by the recognition it will confer upon me, the author, or the clarity it might bring to others.
I hope to have shown how, despite challenging contingencies in society, there are realistic choices an individual can make to close the dissonance between participating in society and cultivating compassion. Compassion is comprehensive enough – that is, it can take upon a wide variety of forms – such that it could be the primary source of motivation as one engages with the world at least in theory. To gain any more certainty of its reality in practice, is an endeavor that can only be pursued outside the pages of this project.
Footnotes
[1] Girard, Innovation, 19.
[2] Girard, Innovation, 19.
[3] For a general overview of dependent origination see Garfield, Engaging, 26 – 36.
[4] I use Tsong Khapa's equivalence of dependent origination and emptiness not because it is universally accepted – in fact, it was controversial and critiqued for being overly reificatory – but because it presents a strong example of the reconstructive drive within Buddhism. The same argument could be made, albeit in a less forceful manner, with other resources in the Mahayana tradition, such as the famous equivalence between emptiness and phenomena in the canonical Heart Sutra: "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form."
[5] For more on the aims of Tsong Khapa and the climate he was writing to see Yarnall, Emptiness, 5.
[6] Garfield, Engaging, 25.
[7] Gardner, Apocalyptic Critique, 18.
[8] It might be hard to imagine how, say, a caring mother with a deep metaphysical desire for her children’s safety in a civil war can ever be convinced that it is always better to wane off the metaphysical. Perhaps she would gladly take the shame, bipolarity, and additional suffering of metaphysical desire if it meant a greater chance for her children’s safety. Indeed, certain environments may demand us to tap into this metaphysical drive; it may even be, in some sense, the better choice to do so. The weakest form of what I am trying to argue is this: regardless of contingent circumstance there is always a hefty price to pay for tapping into the metaphysical drive as a motivator. Of course, this does not preclude that there may be conditions where this price, in the overall calculus, is worth it.
[9] For Loy’s social analysis of how our most central institutions are, in some sense, a channel of lack see Loy, Money, Sex, War, Karma.
[10] Hegel, Right, Preface.
[11] For a form of this argument – that religion loses its legitimacy the more it becomes involved in non-religious spheres – see Tocqueville, Democracy, Chapter 2.1.5.
[12] For a form of this argument – that society requires a large degree of dogmatic beliefs and conformity to function – see Tocqueville, Democracy, Chapter 2.1.2.
[13] See Capital Volume I in Engels and Marx, Reader.
[14] For an argument on how private property became oppressive see “On the Jewish Question” in Engels and Marx, Reader. For an argument on how the granting of equal political liberties became oppressive, or, tyrannical see Tocqueville, Democracy, Chapters 1.2.7 – 9.
[15] Oughlorian, Psychopolitics, 58.
[16] For a more detailed argument of how romantic love is related to an urge to stand out see Neuhouser, Rousseau, 170 – 171.
[17] For a canonical discussion on how pervasive compassion can be as a motivator see Garfield, Engaging, 296 -297.
[18] For a discussion on how genuine compassion demands us to develop other skills, abilities, and dispositions see Garfield, Engaging, 297.
[19] For a full treatment of this ordering see Jenkins, Self and Other.
Table of Contents
Part I: The Psychology of Spirit
Chapter 2: Acquisitive Mimesis
Chapter 3: The Rescuer of Spirit
Part II: A History of Violence
Chapter 4: Mimetic Anthropology
Chapter 6: Mimetic Eschatology
PART III: Antidotes to Apocalypse
Chapter 7: Renouncing Violence