Question

Fully explain what the author means by "Pave the Planet or Wear Shoes."

Subverting Greed Chapter 3: Pave the Planet or Wear Shoes? A Buddhist Perspective on Greed and Globalization

Answer 1

• Basically it means that you can go through life trying to fix every problem you come across, or you can just face the fact that you're gonna have problems and that you need to get over it.
• Throughout the article “Pave the Planet or Wear Shoes” the author discusses the issue of the relationship between the current capitalist economy and the values that it promotes on society.
• While discussing that relationship the author incorporates certain Buddhist principles that relate to the overall problems that result from the current economic system.
• The main problem that arises with the current capitalist economy is that it brings a “staggering ecological impact” and an “unequal distribution of new wealth”.
• The values of greed and delusion that this economic system promotes does not fully support the entire global economy, and this is why the author uses the metaphor “Pave the Planet or Wear Shoes” as a solution to the problem.
• The metaphor is broken up into two parts giving two scenarios or solutions that the global economy will take in order to fix the economic problems of unequal distribution of wealth and the ecological impact.
• The first part of the metaphor “Pave the Planet” is a solution that resorts to the globalization movement of using the world’s technological advancements.
• With this method a capitalist society believes that in order to gain more wealth and success it is necessary for the society to keep using the world’s resources, producing products, and consuming these products.
• This belief of consistent greed and competition to gain more and more wealth is derived from “the fact that humans are fundamentally self-centered”.
• Although these beliefs and values seem immoral and corrupt, this method has proven quite a success for the global economy in the past.
• For example, “more goods and services were consumed in the forty years between 1950 and 1990 than by all the previous human generations”. This increase in the production of goods and services has allowed for the creation of more wealth and opportunities that people have never seen before.
  
• The second part of the metaphor “Wear Shoes” moves in a different direction of using Buddhist principles and teachings to construct a more global friendly economic system. The meaning of the phrase “Wear Shoes” is to allow our minds as not just consumers but also as people to collectively understand our means with regards to the world’s resources and to use them wisely to provide a better biosphere.
• Our obsession with economic growth seems natural to us because we have forgotten the hierarchy of needs that we often take for granted. We project our own values when we assume that a person must be unhappy by presuming that the only way to become happy is to start on the treadmill of a lifestyle increasingly preoccupied with consumption.
• However, the importance of self-limitation, which requires some degree of non-attachment, is an essential human attribute to remain happy according to Buddhism.
• Overall the metaphor “Pave the Planet or Wear Shoes” provides a decision that the world needs to make in order for it to limit the economic problems within our society as a whole. Paving the planet has proven to be beneficial for only a small group of the population. The “wearing shoes” method will promote for a more socially just society as well preserving the biosphere for future generations to come.