Thanks for summarising that so well, we urgently need a rebalancing of so many areas of our lives. Sadly as we have no courageous enlightened leaders we need a groundswell of common voices.
As I was reading the first couple of paragraphs I was reminded of a passage in Alan Bennett's Keeping On Keeping" from a sermon he gave in June 2014.
Fair Play, page 401, Alan Bennett’s “Keeping On Keeping On”
Unlike today's ideologues, whom I would call single-minded if mind came into it at all, I have no fear of the state. I was educated at the expense of the state both at school and university. My father's life was saved by the state as on one occasion was my own. This would be the nanny state, a sneering appellation that gets short shrift with me. Without the state I would not be standing here today. I have no time for the ideology masquerading as pragmatism that would strip the state of its benevolent functions and make them occasions for profit. And why roll back the state only to be rolled over by the corporate entities that have been allowed, nay encouraged, to take its place? I am uneasy when prisons are run for profit or health services either. The rewards of probation and the alleviation of suffering are
human profits and nothing to do with balance sheets. And these days no institution is immune. In my last play the Church of England is planning to sell off Winchester Cathedral. `Why not?' says a character. `The school is private, why shouldn't the cathedral be also?' And it's a joke but it's no longer far-fetched.
With ideology masquerading as pragmatism, profit is now the sole yardstick against which all our institutions must be measured, a policy that comes not from experience but from assumptions – false assumptions - about human nature, with greed and self-interest taken to be its only reliable attributes. In pursuit of profit, the state and all that goes with it is sold from under us who are its rightful owners and with a frenzy and dedication that call up memories of an earlier iconoclasm.
Been thinking about this. A big problem I found in my own work, and in talking about environmental and conservation issues more generally, is that we really need to talk about the idea which is called 'the Tragedy of the Commons,' because there is a strong tendency to ignore the key mechanic described under that name.
The problem is that Hardin tied the discussion of this mechanic to a particular example: English common land and also to a particular solution: top-down control, either by the state or a single landowner. Both of these things have been shown to be inappropriate, as you say.
However the key mechanism: "if I don't do it, someone else will, so I might as well do it," is still a real thing and still omnipresent. There were ways of dealing with it in English common land but these ways had to grow up in that land over time. If those ways are cleared away (say, by a landowner or the state trying to establish complete control but failing to actually do so) then 'the tragedy of the commons' is immediately present and wreaks destruction: justifying the landowner or the state's continued efforts. And new fields are also opened up - actual fields but also 'fields' of enterprise, and fields are amalgamated also. It's so common to say that 'we' should stop doing this bad thing as if there was a 'we'. If someone points out that, in that case, somebody else would just do it more, then that is seen either as moral weakness, or deliberate sabotage of the will to change. AI development is an obvious example right now. There's no international powerful authority that can put the brakes on it as Garrett Hardin would have wished; and it's hard to see the 'international community' putting in place the kind of restrictions that Ostrom would have wanted (as I think she would be the first to point out). So Americans who say 'if we don't do it, the Chinese will' are seen as cynically trying to prevent needed regulations for their own ends. They probably are doing exactly that, but the point is actually valid (and would also apply to Chinese people saying the same thing about the Americans).
So I think we need a way to talk more about the thing called 'The Tragedy of the Commons.' While also pointing out that the name is not a good one. Otherwise we're in denial.
For a long time, many prominent Darwinists were also committed eugenecists. But if you reject Eugenics, it doesn't make Darwin wrong. Fortunately, Darwin himself wasn't and the name 'Natural Selection' isn't strongly tied to any political project or inappropriate example.
I was talking to Seb Stone about the ignorance of the current population - the history taught is what a right wing front bench wants its children to know. In MANY cases, only the folk songs [old and new] about it survive to tell the tale. Tragic.
Thanks for summarising that so well, we urgently need a rebalancing of so many areas of our lives. Sadly as we have no courageous enlightened leaders we need a groundswell of common voices.
Lovely stuff. Thank you for among other things making me feel less alone.
R
As I was reading the first couple of paragraphs I was reminded of a passage in Alan Bennett's Keeping On Keeping" from a sermon he gave in June 2014.
Fair Play, page 401, Alan Bennett’s “Keeping On Keeping On”
Unlike today's ideologues, whom I would call single-minded if mind came into it at all, I have no fear of the state. I was educated at the expense of the state both at school and university. My father's life was saved by the state as on one occasion was my own. This would be the nanny state, a sneering appellation that gets short shrift with me. Without the state I would not be standing here today. I have no time for the ideology masquerading as pragmatism that would strip the state of its benevolent functions and make them occasions for profit. And why roll back the state only to be rolled over by the corporate entities that have been allowed, nay encouraged, to take its place? I am uneasy when prisons are run for profit or health services either. The rewards of probation and the alleviation of suffering are
human profits and nothing to do with balance sheets. And these days no institution is immune. In my last play the Church of England is planning to sell off Winchester Cathedral. `Why not?' says a character. `The school is private, why shouldn't the cathedral be also?' And it's a joke but it's no longer far-fetched.
With ideology masquerading as pragmatism, profit is now the sole yardstick against which all our institutions must be measured, a policy that comes not from experience but from assumptions – false assumptions - about human nature, with greed and self-interest taken to be its only reliable attributes. In pursuit of profit, the state and all that goes with it is sold from under us who are its rightful owners and with a frenzy and dedication that call up memories of an earlier iconoclasm.
Been thinking about this. A big problem I found in my own work, and in talking about environmental and conservation issues more generally, is that we really need to talk about the idea which is called 'the Tragedy of the Commons,' because there is a strong tendency to ignore the key mechanic described under that name.
The problem is that Hardin tied the discussion of this mechanic to a particular example: English common land and also to a particular solution: top-down control, either by the state or a single landowner. Both of these things have been shown to be inappropriate, as you say.
However the key mechanism: "if I don't do it, someone else will, so I might as well do it," is still a real thing and still omnipresent. There were ways of dealing with it in English common land but these ways had to grow up in that land over time. If those ways are cleared away (say, by a landowner or the state trying to establish complete control but failing to actually do so) then 'the tragedy of the commons' is immediately present and wreaks destruction: justifying the landowner or the state's continued efforts. And new fields are also opened up - actual fields but also 'fields' of enterprise, and fields are amalgamated also. It's so common to say that 'we' should stop doing this bad thing as if there was a 'we'. If someone points out that, in that case, somebody else would just do it more, then that is seen either as moral weakness, or deliberate sabotage of the will to change. AI development is an obvious example right now. There's no international powerful authority that can put the brakes on it as Garrett Hardin would have wished; and it's hard to see the 'international community' putting in place the kind of restrictions that Ostrom would have wanted (as I think she would be the first to point out). So Americans who say 'if we don't do it, the Chinese will' are seen as cynically trying to prevent needed regulations for their own ends. They probably are doing exactly that, but the point is actually valid (and would also apply to Chinese people saying the same thing about the Americans).
So I think we need a way to talk more about the thing called 'The Tragedy of the Commons.' While also pointing out that the name is not a good one. Otherwise we're in denial.
For a long time, many prominent Darwinists were also committed eugenecists. But if you reject Eugenics, it doesn't make Darwin wrong. Fortunately, Darwin himself wasn't and the name 'Natural Selection' isn't strongly tied to any political project or inappropriate example.
Absolutely. Spot on.
I was talking to Seb Stone about the ignorance of the current population - the history taught is what a right wing front bench wants its children to know. In MANY cases, only the folk songs [old and new] about it survive to tell the tale. Tragic.