Decay of the Unregulated Common Cause
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Last year one idea kept coming up again and again in our monthly Philosopher's Cafe discussion, the idea of a "Tragedy of the Commons". We decided to devote our entire September meeting to that topic and since we did not get the chance to begin to cover it we have reserved October as well. Since I probably will not be able to attend this meeting, let me discuss the concept in detail here.
If you Google "tragedy & commons" you get two items leading up the list, the Wiki article and a seminal 1968 essay by scientist Garret Hardin. In the September meeting one participant had read Hardin's treatise; he asked me to print it out for the others, so I have it at hand. Hardin explains that he got the strange expression "tragedy" from a definition of that dramatic form by A.N. Whitehead,
"The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things. This inevitableness of destiny can only be illustrated in terms of human life by incidents which in fact involve unhappiness. For it is only by them that the futility of escape can be made evident in the drama."
Tragedy then is tragic because it is inexorable, inevitable, not because it is sad. If I jump off a cliff it is sad if I am hurt or killed, but the tragic element comes from the fact that the law of gravity offers no favoritism, no exceptions for anything or anybody. The Wiki article points to the Ancient Greek historian Thucydides as being the first to talk about this tragic downward cycle, though of course he did not use the specific word "tragedy." Instead he talks about a "decay" of the "common cause."
"[T]hey devote a very small fraction of time to the consideration of any public object, most of it to the prosecution of their own objects. Meanwhile each fancies that no harm will come to his neglect, that it is the business of somebody else to look after this or that for him; and so, by the same notion being entertained by all separately, the common cause imperceptibly decays."
Aristotle, uncharacteristically, put this idea very succinctly: "That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it." This sounds like the reverse of the utilitarian maxim, "The greatest good for the greatest number." Indeed, when everyone is concerned only for their own good exclusive of the common good, then it is as inevitable as gravity that the common cause will decay. Indeed we can see this happening in religion, a sort of tragedy of the divine. Jim Wallis points out in his 1981 book, "The Call to Conversion," that Christians' concept of conversion has suffered a similar degradation from a public event to something totally isolated and private. To cite a review of the book,
"What is needed all around, Wallis argues, is a proper understanding of the biblical meaning of conversion. Evangelicals must give up the idea that conversion is about getting `saved,' a private transaction between God and the individual sinner. Conversion occurs as we open our eyes to the injustices around us: poverty, war, and racism; the destruction of the environment; and the deterioration of families and communities. The goal of conversion is not simply to save souls, Wallis writes, "but to bring the
Conversion, then, is turning on to what really matters, what will make a difference in our lives as well as my life. As Baha'u'llah put it, "The essence of all that we have revealed for thee is justice, is for man to free himself from idle fancy and imitation, discern with the eye of oneness His glorious handiwork, and to look into all things with a searching eye." This sort of outward conversion must in turn, just as inevitably as tragedy, reverse the vicious cycle of decay and turn it around to a utilitarian ideal where everybody thinks of the greatest good for the greatest number, instead of "I am saved and to hell with anybody else."
I think the reason we have set into a decay of the common good is rooted in faith. Traditionally, for thousands of years, when people used words like "God" or "holy" or "divine," or "religion," what they meant was the common good, the greatest good for the greatest number. What they meant was the wise rule of a Solomon, where all are for one, and one for all. The decline of religion poked the eyes out of the sense of these words. Now they are polluted and obscured, and all that remains is an ugly, selfish, superman god, an abusive spouse who isolates "me" from "us" and cares only for The Relationship. Thus when the Bible talked about Yahweh being a "jealous God," the meaning then was wholly different from what we now take it to be.
But I digress. Let us follow the Wiki way and look at the context in which Aristotle wrote the above definition of tragedy of the commons,
"That all persons call the same thing mine in the sense in which each does so may be a fine thing, but it is impracticable; or if the words are taken in the other sense, such a unity in no way conduces to harmony. And there is another objection to the proposal. For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families, many attendants are often less useful than a few." (Politics, Book II, Chapter III, 1261b; translated by Benjamin Jowett)
I think Aristotle is on to something with the last example, for the tragedy of the commons is very much about the consequences of not paying attention to the little things that add up to getting a job done. Often it is better to have one person do a job, rather than a clumsy, fickle, disputatious committee. Abdu'l-Baha recognizes this when He says that unless an Assembly is spiritually on fire, and each is ready to take responsibility, it is better to have one individual, a priest for example, running the community. This reminds me of one among an entire book-full of rants Al Gore makes against the Bush administration in "The Assault on Reason." Gore complains that if you ask Bush’s cabinet who is responsible for security, either all will put up their hands or none will. So if all are responsible, nobody is and the tragedy of the commons kicks in. This happened in spite of the flood of rhetoric about defending the American public from outside threats.
I think the story of David in the Bible is a perfect demonstration of how the personal and social regularly conflict, like two male moose butting antlers during rutting season. The moral of the transition from Saul to David to Solomon is: there is no way to have order unless there is wisdom, that is, when the center cares about the whole, and the whole for the center.
I just saw a wonderful adaptation of this story in a film, originally a television mini-series, called "David," starring Nathaniel Parker and Leonard Nimoy (as the prophet Samuel). You tend to picture a story the way the last film you saw showed it, and, having little kids, the image in my head was of the Veggie-tales version of David and Goliath. Here, David is a tiny pea with a thin baby voice, and Goliath is a huge stalk of broccoli, and you do not see the sling whirl around David's head because peas do not have arms. An entire produce section of great opposing armies are arrayed to watch the battle. Eight-year-old Thomas was very interested to see an adult version, so I let him stay up with me, way past bedtime, to hide under the cover and watch part of it. If he was after blood, he was not disappointed.
This video, "David," shows the battle completely differently from Veggie-tales, either because recent scholarship says that that is not how it happened, or because two arrayed armies would have blown the budget, I do not know. Anyway, they succeed in portraying a sanguinary guerrilla war taking place without massed confrontations of armies, lost in a desolate, rocky landscape. There are long periods of calm interspersed by vicious hand-to-hand combat between small numbers of fighters. War back then may not have killed millions at a time, as in modern battles, but it was as cruel and brutal as you can imagine. (In fact there is an argument that it was worse back then; Steven Pinker makes this point at: <http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/163>) Goliath guards a rocky outcropping, killing every Israelite fighter who dares come near. When David challenges him, only one soldier on David's side sneaks behind to get a peek at what happens when David uses his sling on the enemy champion.
Later, David flees the murderous aims of a mentally deranged Saul, who suspects him for no reason. Saul could put on a suit and walk into certain corridors of power today and fit right in, no questions asked. His attitude is the very model of a modern Machiavellian statesman. His madness is called by his contemporaries "sin," which sums it all up using only three letters. No modern shrink or think tank could offer a better analysis.
Anyway, when David later becomes king, he favors his family and friends. He is more compassionate than just; he does not apply the rule of law, to say the least. He gets entangled in an affair, having his lover's inconvenient soldier husband killed in battle. An early example of bullying in the workplace. On the positive side, formerly a soldier, now he composes glorious songs to God, and the film does a lovely job of showing the power and beauty of the Psalms. As a leader he is a sort of Uber-Jimmy Carter, a Republican’s worst nightmare, one perfectly willing to sacrifice his own interests and that of the country for his sons. One of whom, Absalom, betrays him heartlessly. When the coup fails, even then David wants to forgive Absalom but his generals take the matter into their own hands and kill the upstart. Suffice to say, if David entered politics now he would not be welcome in right wing circles.
Like most leaders, David applied rule of law to everybody except himself, and his nearest and dearest. I would very much like to see a similar film production made about the life of Solomon, the greatest of the Jewish kings. Solomon got it right where his predecessors had stumbled; he started off with humility, a recognition that he was humanly incapable of ruling over a "great people." Then, with the help of God he reconciled the irreconcilable, the personal and the social, the just and the compassionate. In other words, he reversed the tragedy of the commons and brought order and balance to the political equation.
As the Wiki article points out, Garrett Hardin later regretted his original title for the essay, saying that he should instead have called it "The Tragedy of the Unregulated Commons." Wise Solomonic rule, applies regulation through consultation, and offers us all hope for order on a world scale.
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