Example: air traffic controller

Fall 2001 T S C Living on a Lifeboat - Garrett Hardin

Fall 2001 THE social CONTRACT 36 Garrett Hardin , , isProfessor Emeritus of HumanEcology in the Department ofBiological Sciences at theUniversity of California,Santa Barbara. His latestbook is The Ostrich Factor:Our Population Myopiapublished by the OxfordUniversity on a LifeboatA reprint from BioScience, October1974by Garrett HardinSusanne Langer (1942) hasshown that it is probablyimpossible to approach anunsolved problem save through thedoor of metaphor. Later, attemptingto meet the demands of rigor, wemay achieve some success incleansing theory of metaphor,though our success is limited if weare unable to avoid using commonlanguage, which is shot through andthrough with fossil metaphors. (Icount no less than five in thepreceding two sentences.)Since metaphorical thinking isinescapable it is pointless merely toweep about our human must learn to live with them, tounderstand them, and to controlthem.

Fall 2001 THE SOCIAL CONTRACT 36 Garrett Hardin, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Human Ecology in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Tags:

  Social, Living, Lifeboats, S c living on a lifeboat

Information

Domain:

Source:

Link to this page:

Please notify us if you found a problem with this document:

Other abuse

Transcription of Fall 2001 T S C Living on a Lifeboat - Garrett Hardin

1 Fall 2001 THE social CONTRACT 36 Garrett Hardin , , isProfessor Emeritus of HumanEcology in the Department ofBiological Sciences at theUniversity of California,Santa Barbara. His latestbook is The Ostrich Factor:Our Population Myopiapublished by the OxfordUniversity on a LifeboatA reprint from BioScience, October1974by Garrett HardinSusanne Langer (1942) hasshown that it is probablyimpossible to approach anunsolved problem save through thedoor of metaphor. Later, attemptingto meet the demands of rigor, wemay achieve some success incleansing theory of metaphor,though our success is limited if weare unable to avoid using commonlanguage, which is shot through andthrough with fossil metaphors. (Icount no less than five in thepreceding two sentences.)Since metaphorical thinking isinescapable it is pointless merely toweep about our human must learn to live with them, tounderstand them, and to controlthem.

2 All of us, said George Eliotin Middlemarch, get our thoughtsentangled in metaphors, and actfatally on the strength of them. Toavoid unconscious suicide we arewell advised to pit one metaphoragainst another. From the interplayof competitive metaphors,thoroughly developed, we maycome closer to metaphor-freesolutions to our generation has viewed theproblem of the survival of thehuman species as seriously as wehave. Inevitably, we have enteredthis world of concern through thedoor of have emphasizedthe image of the earth as aspaceship Spaceship Boulding (1966) is theprincipal architect of this is time, he says, that we replacethe wasteful cowboy economy ofthe past with the frugal spaceshipeconomy required for continuedsurvival in the limited world we nowsee ours to be. The metaphor isnotably useful in justifying pollutioncontrol , the image of aspaceship is also used to promotemeasures that are suicidal.

3 One ofthese is a generous immigrationpolicy, which is only a particularinstance of a class of policies thatare in error because they lead tothe tragedy of the commons( Hardin 1968). These suicidalpolicies are attractive because theymesh with what we unthinkinglytake to be the ideals of the bestpeople. What is missing in theidealistic view is an insistence thatrights and responsibilities must gotogether. The generous attitudeof all too many people results inasserting inalienable rights whileignoring or denying the metaphor of a spaceshipto be correct, the aggregate ofpeople on board would have to beunder unitary sovereign control(Ophuls 1974). A true ship alwayshas a captain. It is conceivable thata ship could be run by a it could not possibly survive ifits course were determined bybickering tribes that claimed rightswithout responsibilities.

4 What about Spaceship Earth? Itcertainly has no captain, and noexecutive committee. The UnitedNations is a toothless tiger, becausethe signatories of its charter wantedit that way. The spaceshipmetaphor is used only to justifyspaceship demands on commonresources without acknowledgingcorresponding understandable fear ofdecisive action leads people toembrace incrementalism moving toward reform by tinystages. As we shall see, thisstrategy is counterproductive in thearea discussed here if it meansaccepting rights beforeresponsibilities. Where humansurvival is at stake, the acceptanceof responsibilities is a preconditionto the acceptance of rights, if the Fall 2001 THE social CONTRACT 37 ..the energy crunchis convincing morepeople every day thatwe have alreadyexceeded thecarrying capacity ofthe land. two cannot be EthicsBefore taking up certainsubstantive issues let us look atan alternative metaphor, that of alifeboat.

5 In developing somerelevant examples the followingnumerical values are two-thirds of theworld is desperately poor, andonly one-third is comparativelyrich. The people in poor countrieshave an average per capita GNP(Gross National Product) of about$200 per year, the rich, of about$3,000. (For the United States it isnearly $5,000 per year.)Metaphorically, each rich nationamounts to a Lifeboat full ofcomparatively rich people. The poorof the world are in other, muchmore crowded, , so to speak, the poorfall out of their lifeboats and swimfor a while in the water outside,hoping to be admitted to a richlifeboat, or in some other way tobenefit from the goodies onboard. What should the passengerson a rich Lifeboat do? This is thecentral problem of the ethics of alifeboat. First we must acknowledge thateach Lifeboat is effectively limited incapacity.

6 The land of every nationhas a limited carrying capacity. Theexact limit is a matter for argument,but the energy crunch is convincingmore people every day that wehave already exceeded the carryingcapacity of the land. We have beenliving on capital storedpetroleum and coal and soon wemust live on income us look at only one Lifeboat ours. The ethical problem is thesame for all, and is as we sit, say fifty people in alifeboat. To be generous, let usassume our boat has a capacity often more, making sixty. (This,however, is to violate theengineering principle of the safetyfactor. A new plant disease or abad change in the weather maydecimate our population if we don tpreserve some excess capacity asa safety factor.)The fifty of us in the Lifeboat seea hundred others swimming in thewater outside, asking for admissionto the boat, or for handouts.

7 Howshall we respond to their calls?There are several We may be tempted to tryto live by the Christian ideal ofbeing our brother s keeper, or bythe Marxian ideal (Marx 1875) of from each according to hisabilities, to each according to hisneeds. Since the needs of all arethe same, we take all the needy intoour boat, making a total of onehundred and fifty in a boat with acapacity of sixty. The boat isswamped, and everyone justice, Since the boat has anunused excess capacity of ten,we admit just ten more to it. Thishas the disadvantage of gettingrid of the safety factor, for whichaction we will sooner or later paydearly. Moreover, which ten dowe let in? First come, firstserved? The best ten? Theneediest ten? How do wediscriminate? And what do wesay to the ninety who areexcluded? Three. Admit no more to theboat and preserve the small safetyfactor.

8 Survival of the people in thelifeboat is then possible (though weshall have to be on our guardagainst boarding parties).The last solution is abhorrent tomany people. It is unjust, they us grant that it is. I feel guilty about my goodluck, say some. The reply to this issimple: Get out and yield yourplace to others. Such a selflessaction might satisfy the conscienceof those who are addicted to guiltbut it would not change the ethicsof the Lifeboat . The needy person towhom a guilt addict yields his placewill not himself feel guilty about hissudden good luck. (If he did hewould not climb aboard.) The netresult of conscience-stricken peoplerelinquishing their unjustly heldpositions is the elimination of theirkind of conscience from thelifeboat. The Lifeboat , as it were,purifies itself of guilt. The ethics ofthe Lifeboat persist, unchanged bysuch momentary aberrations.

9 This then is the basic metaphorwithin which we must work out oursolutions. Let us enrich the imagestep by step with substantiveadditions from the real world. Fall 2001 THE social CONTRACT 38 ReproductionThe harsh characteristics oflifeboat ethics are heightened byreproduction, particularly byreproductive differences. Thepeople inside the lifeboats of thewealthy nations are doubling innumbers every eighty-seven years;those outside are doubling everythirty-five years, on the the relative difference inprosperity is becoming us, for a while, thinkprimarily of the Lifeboat . As of1973, the United States had apopulation of 210 million peoplewho were increasing by percentper year, that is, doubling in numberevery eighty-seven the citizens of richnations are outnumbered two to oneby the poor, let us imagine an equalnumber of poor people outside ourlifeboat a mere 210 million poorpeople reproducing at a quitedifferent rate.

10 If we imagine theseto be the combined populations ofColombia, Venezuela, Ecuador,Morocco, Thailand, Pakistan, andthe Philippines, the average rate ofincrease of the people outside isa percent per year. Thedoubling time of this population istwenty-one that all these countries,and the United States, agreed tolive by the Marxian ideal, to eachaccording to his needs, the ideal ofmost Christians as well. Needs, ofcourse, are determined bypopulation size, which is affected byreproduction. Every nation regardsits rate of reproduction as asovereign right. If our Lifeboat werebig enough in the beginning it mightbe possible to live for a while byChristian-Marxian ideals. , in the model given, theratio of non-Americans toAmericans would be one to consider what the ratio wouldbe eighty-seven years later.


Related search queries