Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book…
© Mahabodhi Burton
12 minute read
Check out this fascinating 7-minute excerpt from the chapter ‘Transhumanism and Alienation,’ which explores the connection between Buddhism and Silicon Valley, including the concepts of ‘Buddhism-lite’ and Wisdom 2.0.
Are you concerned about the dilution of Buddhism in a secular context? This excerpt is a must-read.
Buddhists in Silicon Valley
Emma Grey Ellis, in her WIRED review[1] of Dan Zigmond’s book Buddha’s Office–Dan is a Facebook (and Microsoft, Instagram, YouTube, and Google) alum, data analyst and Zen priest[2]–spells out the strong connection between Buddhism and Silicon Valley.
‘In Silicon Valley, you are always an iPhone’s throw from a Buddhist. Some of them will have arrived at their Buddhism the usual way—family, culture—but a fair few will have adopted it later in life, as a piece of their adult identity. Even if they’re not checking the “Buddhist” box on the census, you’ll know them by their Zen meditation retreats, their references to ‘the Middle Way’, their wealth … of Steve Jobs trivia. Did you know that Steve Jobs was a Buddhist who studied under Zen priest Kobun Chino Otogawa and once wandered India in search of a guru? Did you know Jobs swiped Apple’s famous “Think different” slogan from the Dalai Lama? Did you know Buddhism and tech companies have a grand historical ‘synergy’?[3] When I moved to California from the East Coast, I did not. After living and working in San Francisco for a few years, I see Buddha everywhere.’
Wisdom 2.0
‘Every February or thereabouts, representatives from tech companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and PayPal gather in San Francisco for Wisdom 2.0, a conference that aims to unite mindfulness with technology.’[4]
‘Over the course of several days, high-profile digerati interact with spiritual luminaries like Eckhart Tolle, Jon Kabat-Zinn and Joan Halifax, to explore topics such as ‘mindful management,’ ‘conscious leadership,’ and ‘wisdom in the workplace’ through speeches, dialogues, and group sessions.’[5]
In a 2014 article called The selective awareness of Wisdom 2.0, Darrin Drda asks whether in taking an ancient practice, removing it from its context, stripping away its ethical imperatives and selling it for a profit, ‘Is the goal of the corporate mindfulness movement to comfort the already comfortable?’[6]
By 2001, Slavoj Zizek had already pointed out a link between Western Buddhism and late capitalism:
‘Marxist philosopher Slavoj Yizek has long argued that “Western Buddhism,” as he calls it, is an ideal palliative for the stresses of life under late capitalism—their “perfect ideological supplement.”
‘“It enables you to fully participate in the frantic pace of the capitalist game,” Žižek explains in a 2001 essay for Cabinet magazine,[7] “while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it; that you are well aware of how worthless this spectacle is; and that what really matters to you is the peace of the inner Self to which you know you can always withdraw.”’[8]
He is, of course, referring to what we might call ‘Buddhism-lite’:’ a selection of Buddhish practices ‘mainstreamed’ for mass consumption. A selection of these are: mindfulness taken in its narrowest sense, comprising predominantly of body and breath awareness practices; a focus on non-reactivity and on the acceptance of difficult experiences; and the ‘twin pillars’ of self-compassion and self-acceptance. And many self-avowed Silicon Valley Buddhists, like Dan Zigmond, veer towards traditions such as Zen, which is often interpreted as valuing spontaneity over basic Buddhist ethics. In the his teaching of the path to Nirvana: The Noble Eightfold Path, the Buddha teaches thus:
‘And what is that ancient path, that ancient road, travelled by the Rightly Self-awakened Ones of former times? Just this Noble Eightfold Path: right view, right aspiration, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. That is the ancient path, the ancient road, travelled by the Rightly Self-awakened Ones of former times.[9]
Elsewhere the Buddha claims that if any teaching does not contain the Noble Eightfold Path, it is not his teaching.
The eight limbs of the Noble Eightfold Path are apportioned into three sections, representing the Threefold Way of ‘Ethics, Meditation and Wisdom:’ where right action (samma kammanta,) right speech (samma vaca) and right livelihood (samma ajiva) constitute ‘Ethics;’ right effort (samma vayama,) right mindfulness (samma sati) and right meditation (samma samadhi) constitute ‘Meditation’ and right vision (samma ditthi) and right intention (samma sankappa) constitute ’Wisdom.’
Right livelihood is making sure that one’s way of life–one’s occupation, even one’s politics (jiva simply means ‘life’)–promotes only good, and not harm; right action is practising the Buddhist ethical precepts, in their negative and positive formulations, these are: not harming living beings; in the positive, cultivating loving kindness, not taking the not-given; in the positive, being generous, not harming living beings through concern with sensory experience, including sexual involvement; in the positive, cultivating stillness, simplicity and contentment, not being untruthful; in the positive, telling the truth, and avoiding intoxication; in the positive, practising mindfulness.
Buddhism-lite—which, even if it doesn’t omit it outright, is certainly light on right livelihood: it therefore does not posit an ethical outlook that might threaten one’s means of earning a living.
Mark Zuckerberg and Buddhism
Mark Zuckerberg’s wife: Priscilla Chan, is a Buddhist; and Mark is sympathetic. He thinks it ‘An amazing religion and philosophy … I have been learning more about it over time [and] hope to continue understanding the faith more deeply.’’[10] In fact, we might venture that Facebook / Meta’s company vision is a little Buddh-ish:
‘Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission—to make the world more open and connected.’
On a certain level, through social media companies like Facebook, the world is more connected, at least superficially. Technology provides the means of connection, however there is no getting around the fact that there will, in any system, be an ethical dimension, for good or bad: something will be happening ethically in the system.
Facebook / Meta is not only about people sharing their experience but creating and promoting a self-image: a persona: in that sense it is going in the opposite direction to the Buddha’s doctrine on non-self. Or, it can be.
Identities can be good things, if curating them leads us to be a better person; there is the idea in Buddhism of ‘Buddha pride:’ if we align ourselves with certain Enlightened Buddha qualities and through focusing on them begin to manifest them, then that can only be a good thing. But if adopting a persona moves us away from reality into a world of fantasy, then at some point ‘the chickens will come home to roost’ and, to the extent that we have been living in unreality, we will suffer.
Tristan Harris’s critique of social media is that it minimises responsibility and commodifies human experience. If Zuckerberg wants to learn more about Buddhism, he might investigate right livelihood more and pay attention to the effects of his businesses, making sure that the whole way his economic, social, and even political life impacts upon others is only to their benefit: we need to not forget that the military in (Buddhist) Myanmar in 2018 used Facebook to launch a genocide. Choosing personal wealth and power over community safety and worldwide social harmony is clearly not right livelihood.
Online child safety concerns
Zuckerberg has been in the news recently as he was grilled in the US Senate Judiciary Committee on online child safety. Senator Josh Hawley questions Zuckerberg on whether he said in his opening statement that there was no link between mental health and social media use. Zuckerberg replied that ‘it is important to look at the science … and that the bulk of the scientific evidence does not support that.’ Hawley replies that Instagram‘s own study reported that ‘we make body issues worse for one-in-three teen girls’ and also that ‘teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression. This reaction was unprompted and consistent among all groups.’ Hawley reveals how a senior executive whistleblower from Meta had shared some damning statistics: 13-15 year old girls had encountered either unwanted nudity (37%,) sexual advances (24%) or self-harm content pushed at them (17%) in the past 7 days. And he eventually pushes Zuckerberg into apologizing to parents present at the hearing who held up pictures of loved ones who they claimed had been harmed or lost to them due to Meta products. Hawley concludes by asking why Meta should not be sued for the harms done and whether Zuckerberg would set up a compensation scheme for the families of the victims with his own money; Hawley didn’t get a clear reply.[11]
Respected physicist and YouTuber Sabine Hossenfelder backs up Zuckerberg’s claim.[12] She attests that rather than the world facing a global mental health crisis, as many headlines have claimed, ‘we don’t have a global mental health crisis. … By and large, mental health globally has been remarkably stable.’ However, she continues: ‘the mental health of one demographic group has been suffering in the past decade: and that’s adolescent girls in some countries, and to a lesser extent also boys. This is evident in data from the USA, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and some other countries, where self-reports also correlate with self-harm. In other countries such as Sweden, this mental health trend is primarily found in self-reports from girls that are difficult to interpret and does not correlate with self-harm statistics.’
The graphs logging prevalence of major depression show a steady line at around 6% from 2008 to 2018 among 26+ year-olds; in those aged from 12-25 the line holds steady at around 8%, then rises to 14% between 2012 and 2018; notably, these are all pre-pandemic figures, and might be expected to have increased dramatically since. A common ‘take off point’ in different studies is around 2012: for instance, in Australia among 16-24 year-old girls, after being at the same level since 2002, psychological distress increases 74.6% among females by 2020 (among males the increase was 56%.) In New Zealand those females in the age group 15-24 with an anxiety disorder increased 259% between 2010 and 2020 (males in the same age group increased by 131%.)
These figures are largely self-reports. However, looking at hard science studies, Sabine attests that ‘the studies on the topic have been inconclusive.’ However, one 2022 study which looked at over 20,000 students in the UK aged between 10 and 15 found that increases in social media use predicted a decrease in life satisfaction ratings a year later. Another, in 2023, found that while social media does have a negative impact on mental health, it is one of the least influential factors; the authors cite factors such as bullying and lack of family support as more deserving of the focus of attention.
Sabine likens the situation to that with political polarization / echo chambers: ‘while these problems of polarization and echo chambers do exist, their strength and prevalence depends on the medium and the country and on exactly what question you ask. Basically, the issue is that psychology and sociology are very context dependent: not every field of science is as nice as physics, where you have universal laws and Einstein’s theories still hold up a century later.’ In other words, they are ‘soft-sciences.’
In summary, I would say that if we weigh the self-reported statistics along with the hard science studies, there a) does seem to be declining mental health among teens, and b) there is some connection with social media use and declining life satisfaction. The fact that social media usage is ‘buried’ within a nest of social factors makes it hard to isolate as a single cause: proof is inherently difficult in the social sciences; and perhaps Zuckerberg gets to ‘hide behind’ this fact. The same thing happened with a failure to prove absolutely that smoking causes lung cancer, which fact the tobacco companies hid behind. Human judgement tells us that if girls spend inordinate amounts of time on social media comparing their bodies with those of their friends, they will start to feel negative about their own appearance;[13] we don’t need science to tell us that.
Of course, it can’t be easy to be in Zucherberg’s position: humankind is at a particular cusp in history where rapid technological change has led to small numbers of individuals—through effective monopolies on social media (Facebook), search (Google) and broadcasting (YouTube)—holding unprecedented capacity to enact consequences upon the world—without necessarily ‘having the unprecedented wisdom to guide that power’ (Tristan Harris).
We bear collective responsibility
However, we all bear collective responsibility: in War and Peace Tolstoy describes the cause of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in the summer of 1812:
‘There was no one cause for that occurrence, but it had to occur because it had to. Millions of men, renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come from the east to the west, slaying their fellows.’[14]
The point he is making is that it wasn’t simply Napoleons’ decision to invade Russia that made it happen, but the collective will—both conscious and unconscious—of the French people which manifested ‘in a movement from west to east.’ In the same way, in 1930s Germany, Hitler ‘acted out the dark desire of the mob:’[15] what happened in Germany was a (destructive) constructive combination of Hitler and the will of the German people; Jung called Hitler ‘the mouthpiece of the collective unconscious of the German people.’[16] In the same way, we can’t blame Zuckerberg for our predicament; we are all culpable, to the extent that we manifest self-interest, prejudice and greed.
In a 2016 TEDx talk,[17] Candace Owens relates how the invention of the hashtag severely impacted her life as a child, and probably instigated her own life in journalism. She says that activism formerly used to involve a degree of risk: such as leaving one’s house and marching in the streets–—but today it can be done with the click of a mouse. Today we express our opinions not just about institutions but any individual who sticks their head above the parapet can take the brunt of our criticism. Today, people get to have an opinion about potentially everything: in a process Owens calls ‘rapid rate opinionism.’ As a remedy, she invites activists to consider what it must be like to be on the other end of their activism. In this way, politics is in danger of becoming not a collective discussion of ideas, but a leveraging of opinion against individuals: and, as Jordan Peterson says:
‘People are not that brave. … statistically it is very improbable that we would be one of the heroes who rescued the Jews. … (I have learned) how unlikely it is for people to speak up: they just won’t. … even tenured professors (who are tenured, they’re protected); it’s like the probability that they’ll pop their head up and say something that might make them identifiable is very low. … Even when the stakes are low people won’t speak up.’[18]
So the ability of the whole world to express its opinion to a single individual in no position of power is something that has a dramatic effect on its body politic.
The problem is, whatever Facebook does, it probably has some unintended effect: it gets criticized one day for making discourse too frivolous and meaningless and on another, too combative. According to the article Explained: the algorithms that run Facebook:[19] in 2017 Facebook started prioritizing emoji-based emotional reactions over Likes; receiving widespread criticism, in 2018 Zuckerberg said that Facebook’s algorithm would now prioritize ‘posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions:’ these changes ended up increasing outrage and divisiveness and promoting more misinformation and hateful content; in 2019 the algorithm started bumping up posts from ‘close friends’—those that people engage with the most; and in 2020 Facebook announced that its algorithm will now evaluate the credibility and quality of news articles to promote substantiated news rather than ‘misinformation.’ The change to the algorithm in 2018 led to divisiveness; the one in 2020 led to censorship.
I experienced this first-hand. I remember streaming a video live on YouTube on 12 January 2021 called What does it take to wake up: Science and Moral Leadership,[20] which concerned the relatively slow speed of the vaccination roll out. After sharing the video on Facebook I got a polite ‘pop up’ question from Facebook: ‘Are you sure you want to share this?’–the video description had mentioned vaccination.
Then, on 24 May 2021, when I attempted to share a video on my YouTube channel of Dr Sabeen Hazan from Malibu, California ‘showing how 5 patients presented with severe Covid-19 symptoms were treated with a combination of drugs and got better, I received a Community Guidelines warning from Google and the video was taken down.
I remember seeing an interview with one of the main developers of the Facebook algorithm. He said that in its early development he was focused on the technical problem of trying to make machine learning (or AI) work at increasing scale; however, once things started to ‘go wrong’ after 2018 after the algorithm started to promote divisiveness, he was at a loss what to do about it. This shows how there is no problem with AI until it starts to affect the moral landscape, but once such problems do arise, its curators—the ‘techie’ community—are not best placed to deal with it, given their limited experience in ethics; and Facebook and other tech giants have brought in panels of experts to decide about these issues, but there is always the danger that decisions are swayed by personal politics, as The Twitter Files revealed.
Since the advent of social media censorship and general bias across media platforrms, a couple of innovations have evolved which a) bring in moderation by the people and b) make transparent the media landscape.
Community Notes on ‘X’
Once Elon Musk had bought Twitter (now X) he got his teams to work on a system that ‘aims to create a better-informed world, by empowering people on X to collaboratively add helpful notes to posts that might be misleading.’[21] The system they came up with is called Community Notes: which has certain key principles:
- Contributors write and rate notes: Contributors are people on X who sign up to write and rate notes. The more people that participate, the better the program becomes.
- Only notes rated helpful by people from diverse perspectives appear on posts: Community Notes doesn’t work by majority rules. To identify notes that are helpful to a wide range of people, notes require agreement between contributors who have sometimes disagreed in their past ratings. This helps prevent one-sided ratings.
- X doesn’t choose what shows up, the people do: X doesn’t write, rate or moderate notes unless people break X’s rules. They ‘believe giving people a voice to make these choices together is a fair and effective way to add information that helps people stay better informed.’
- Open-source and transparent: It’s important for people to understand how Community Notes works, and to be able to help shape it. The program is built on transparency: all contributions are published daily, and our ranking algorithm can be inspected by anyone.
Ground News
Ground News is a website which reads the news from multiple media sources and then displays the same story as covered in outlets across the political spectrum. The reader can thus see clearly a story as viewed from different political angles and even when a story is not covered at all. As Patricia Sanders says in reviewing the service:
‘There are three sides to every story. What you think happened, what I think happened and what actually happened. And with such a wide division between political rivals, it’s great to see all three sides in one location.’[22]
For instance, Ground News has a ‘blindspot’ facility: of 6 articles on the topic: ‘Biden, asked about age, says it’s “about how old your ideas are,”’[23] 67% of sources lean Right, 33% lean Centre and 0% lean Left. Likewise, concerning the story: ‘Tennessee House advances bill to ban reappointing lawmakers booted for behaviour,’[24] 40% of sources lean Left, 60% lean Centre and 0% lean Right. We can only pray that such innovations lead to greater dialogue across the political spectrum.
The chapter goes on to explore Techno-Feudalism equals Caste.
[1] Emma Grey Ellis. ‘Diss Tech Buddhists All You Want—but Read This Book First: Tech veteran Dan Zigmond wants you to bring Buddha to the office. It’s not as ironic as it sounds.’ Wired. 6 December 2019.
https://www.wired.com/story/buddhas-office-dan-zigmond/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBYi0VMxkjI
[3] Religion. Wired.
https://www.wired.com/tag/religion/?page=1
[4] Darrin Drda. ‘The Selective Awareness of Wisdom 2.0. Open Democracy. 16 April 2014.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/selective-awareness-of-wisdom-20/
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Slavoj Zizek. ‘From Western Marxism to Western Buddhism: The Taoist ethic and the spirit of global capitalism.’ Cabinet. Spring 2001.
https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/2/zizek.php
[8] Joshua Eaton. ‘Gentrifying the dharma: How the 1 percent is hijacking mindfulness.’ Salon. 5 March 2014.
https://www.salon.com/2014/03/05/gentrifying_the_dharma_how_the_1_is_hijacking_mindfulness/
[9] The Buddha, Nagara Sutta, Samyutta Nikaya ii.124, Translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path–cite_note-33
[10] Sam Littlefair. ‘Mark Zuckerberg says “Buddhism is an amazing religion”.’ Lion’s Roar. October 27 2015.
https://www.lionsroar.com/mark-zuckerberg-says-buddhism-is-an-amazing-religion/
[11] ‘MUST WATCH: Josh Hawley Gets Applauded Multiple Times Ruthlessly Grilling Mark Zuckerberg.’ Forbes Breaking News. YouTube. 1 February 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNaMjWCBdDU
[12] ‘Just Because You Don’t Like Zuckerberg Doesn’t Mean He’s Wrong.’ Sabine Hossenfelder. YouTube. 6 February 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlZTv5vGJIo&t=302s
[13] ‘Selfie’ body image warning issued.’ BBC. 10 April 2014. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-26952394
[14] Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace. Book nine. Chapter 1.
[15] Jordan Peterson analyses how Hitler listened to the crowd’s response and fed back to them what they responded to most. ‘Jordan Peterson Shares His Thoughts on Hitler.’ H3 Podcast Highlights. YouTube. 26 Nov 2017.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dwsYWF7TXI
[16] Ibid.
[17] ‘The Truth About Your Activism’ Candace Owens. TEDxMSJC.’ TEDx Talks YouTube. 20 October 2016.
[18] ‘Jordan Peterson Shares His Thoughts on Hitler.’ H3 Podcast Highlights. YouTube. 26 November 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dwsYWF7TXI
[19] ‘Explained: The algorithms that run Facebook’ The Economic Times.
[20] ‘What does it take to wake up:’ Science and Moral Leadership – Tuesday 12 January.’ Mahabodhi Burton. YouTube. 12 January 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTX0Z-FTif4&list=PLg5RbybRZpw0r-kdEKJiSJoi0x7Zj1_ZD&index=18
[21] ‘Community Notes: a collaborative way to add helpful context to posts and keep people better informed.’ X. https://communitynotes.twitter.com/guide/en/about/introduction
[22] Ground News. https://bit.ly/GroundNews
[23] Tara Suter. ‘Biden, asked about age, says it’s “about how old your ideas are.”’ The Hill.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4490922-biden-asked-about-age-seth-meyers/?
[24] Associated Press. ‘Tennessee House advances bill to ban reappointing lawmakers booted for behaviour.’ NBC News. 27 February 2024. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tennessee-house-advances-bill-ban-reappointing-lawmakers-booted-behavi-rcna140641?
Users Today : 111
Users Yesterday : 23
This Month : 569
Total Users : 13996
