SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt
SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt
SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt
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182<br />
The Meaning of Sufficiency Economy <br />
International Conference<br />
That’s where SE’s condition of reasonableness comes into play. Reasonableness<br />
should not be confused with the narrow neoclassical economic conception of<br />
rationality. The enlightenment era “Economic Man” model based on the neoclassical<br />
theory of methodological individualism presents an atomistic individual using<br />
instrumental or means-to-ends rationality, calculating choices of comparable value<br />
to arrive at the optimal outcome: maximization of self-interests, whether for profit or<br />
some other form of satisfaction. SE’s reasonableness also has to do with making<br />
choices, but it more broadly involves analyzing reasons and potential actions and<br />
grasping the immediate and distant consequences of those actions. Reasonable<br />
choices are made possible by wisdom, embodying not only accumulated knowledge,<br />
but the insight to put it to judicious use, as well as integrity, meaning virtuous or<br />
ethical behavior including honesty, diligence, and non-exploitation. Thus,<br />
reasonableness informed by wisdom and integrity will help make decisions about<br />
how best to use surplus for the larger social good.<br />
Clearly SE’s philosophical approach provides individuals with the mental and<br />
moral orientations and skills that are needed to create deep and lasting change, and<br />
that will make it more successful than SLA in the long run. While both SLA and SE<br />
are laudable as alternative development approaches, SE can more easily learn from<br />
SLA to improve its analytical capability than can SLA adopt SE’s emphasis on<br />
internal development. Still, both can be improved in terms of community<br />
empowerment.<br />
<br />
Community Empowerment via Interdependence<br />
Community empowerment can be accomplished by stressing interdependence,<br />
which SE is well equipped to do given its Buddhist underpinnings and its promotion<br />
of networks. However, at this point, it seems that SE’s main concern is human<br />
development at the individual- and firm-level; only when these are stable does it<br />
advise branching out into networks or communities of specialized production and<br />
distribution units and other relevant cooperative entities such as savings<br />
cooperatives and seed banks. I propose that for more profound results at the<br />
community level, SE could be refined to emphasize interdependent selves from the<br />
outset and to conceive of socio-economic relationships not simply as networks but<br />
as community economies.<br />
The initial philosophical shift to interdependent selves draws on Buddhist<br />
ontology. It starts with the theory of conditionality or dependent origination (paticca<br />
samuppada), which describes a 12-link chain of dependently arising conditions<br />
(ignorance, volitional impulses, consciousness, body and mind, six sense bases,<br />
sense contact, feeling, craving, clinging, becoming, birth, and aging and death,<br />
which have despair as their by-product). There is no first cause, as each depends on<br />
the existence of another to come into being, and at the same time, each conditions<br />
the arising and existence of yet another. On a few occasions, the Buddha also