Garrett Hardin was a lad who not only thought a lot, but
could also think well. I recently
discovered a Hardin book I had not heard of, The
Ostrich Factor — Our Population Myopia (1998). Hardin was an interesting blend of an ecological
conservative, and a growth-hating political conservative who detested
economists. I hoped that this book would
provide fresh insights on the huge and difficult problem of overpopulation.
After Living
Within Limits was published in 1993, critics noted that Hardin
complained about overpopulation, but failed to provide a remedy. Hardin admitted that he had been intimidated
by the explosive taboo on the subject, which incinerates every dreamer who
blunders into it, foolishly preaching common sense. Hence, the ostrich factor — never touch 800-volt
issues that are surrounded by large piles of scorched skeletons. You can’t win, so bury your head in the sand,
and have a nice day!
There is a widespread fantasy, drilled into us by cultural
myths, that our society is guided by reason and elevated moral principles. It’s silly nonsense, but we have a hard time
seeing this. Many people waste their
entire lives, sad victims of the tragedy of the consumers — powerful myths that
compel us to spend our lives working, in order to move as much stuff as
possible from nature to landfills, in order to gain the respect of our peer
group, which suffers from the same mass hysteria. Well-trained consumers never question 800-volt
myths.
Modern society is focused on the individual, not the
community or ecosystem. I am all that
matters. If I can gain status and
respect by wiping out forests or fisheries, or throwing the planet’s climate
out of balance, I will. I don’t care
that I’m leaving behind a wasteland for future generations. Of course, if future generations were able to
vote today, or if we were raised in a sane culture, our world would be
radically different and far healthier.
Hardin was fascinated by the poisonous power of taboos, and
he invited an imaginary Martian into his book, to observe our society as an
objective outsider. (I wish he had used humans
from the future.) The two of them
explored uncomfortable notions that will make some readers squirm and
snarl. They provide us with intense
lessons about the powerful headlock that taboos have on our ability to think. Taboos push many commonsense ideas off
limits, severely handicapping our freedom to think, forcing many to live like
two-year olds, ecological psychopaths, or chronically depressed shoppers.
Taboos vary from place to place and time to time. I was surprised to see that Hardin only
mentioned abortion once, with regard to a quote from 1886, describing a
situation where abortion was legal, but contraception was not. In that scenario, many physicians chose to
break the law against providing contraception.
It is important to understand that many wild cultures had
customs that encouraged population stability.
Their ongoing survival depended entirely on food from the surrounding
wild ecosystem, and too many mouths led to painful problems. Their utmost concern was the health and
stability of the community, not the whims of individuals. They shared and cooperated. It was obvious to them that the carrying
capacity of their ecosystem had genuine limits.
For us, living in a temporary wonderland of supermarkets, limits are
hard to imagine — until we crash into them.
The emergence of agriculture redefined carrying capacity,
which varied from year to year, depending on the harvest. Limits on breeding weakened or vanished. Hardin quoted Tertullian, a third century
Christian thinker from Tunisia, who was spooked by the misery of overpopulation
(when the global population was 150 million).
Tertullian wrote, “As our demands grow greater, our
complaints against nature’s inadequacy are heard by all. The scourges of pestilence, famine, wars, and
earthquakes have come to be regarded as a blessing to overcrowded nations,
since they serve to prune away the luxuriant growth of the human race.”
Like Tertullian, Reverend Malthus (1766-1834) also lived in
an era of turbulent growth, and he became a notorious heretic for reminding
society about the existence of carrying capacity. Two hundred years later, he remains fiercely
detested, mostly by people who have never read him, because he pointed out a
serious 800-volt issue, a super-taboo.
Never, never, never suggest that there are limits to growth!
Perpetual growth on a finite planet is obviously impossible,
obviously insane, and insanely destructive.
Sustainable
growth is an oxymoron. But few
goofy myths are more powerful. We are
constantly reminded that perpetual growth is the purpose of life. Grow or die!
Our official religion is Growth Forever.
Fanatical believers are called optimistic, and optimism is “good.” Hardin disagreed, “At the present rate of
population growth, it’s difficult to be optimistic about the future.”
With regard to population, our culture asserts two rights
simultaneously. (1) Right to life. The UN decrees that “every man, woman, and
child has the inalienable right to be free from hunger and malnutrition.” (2) Right to limitless reproductive freedom. “Every woman has the right — perhaps with the
agreement of her mate(s) — to determine how many children she shall produce.”
There are no natural rights; rights are legal
inventions. Note that these two sacred rights are not
accompanied by sacred responsibilities. Hardin concluded that overpopulation would
not be resolved by the voluntary choices of individual families. In a finite world, unrestricted freedom is
intolerable. Survival is mandatory;
freedom is not. Effective solutions should
be based on community-sensitive rules, ideally produced by a policy of “mutual
coercion, mutually agreed upon.” Our
wild ancestors generally succeeded in doing this, because their cultures saw
limits as being perfectly normal, not draconian.
Hardin knew that “coercion” is an obscene word in a culture
that worships individualism, but he noted that we submit to coercion when we
stop for red lights, or when we bike on the right side of the road. Coercion is often reciprocal. Money is coercion. There are many things we will eagerly do for
money that we would never do for free. We are often coerced by nothing more than a
sweet “pretty please.”
Hardin thought that one world government was impossible, because
there is not a single world culture. Trying
to get different cultures to agree on anything is a challenge for advocates of multiculturalism. Because of this, Hardin offered no silver
bullet solution for the world. Each
culture will have to design its own method for limiting population.
Predicaments have no solutions, but problems do. Overpopulation is merely a temporary problem,
and there are two solutions. (1) We can
make a commonsense effort to live below carrying capacity. (2) We can bury our heads in the sand, make
no effort to influence the future, and let Big Mama Nature mercilessly do the
dirty work. The commonsense approach
saves a lot of wear and tear on the ecosystem, and makes life far less
hellish. It is enthusiastically endorsed
by the spirits of future generations.
Hardin, Garrett, The
Ostrich Factor — Our Population Myopia, Oxford University Press, New York,
1998.
Ironically, what began as a radically liberal experiment in individual freedom, with the establishment of the United States, has morphed into a profoundly conservative social philosophy which utterly fails to address the current crisis.
ReplyDeleteThe most apt definition of conservatism comes from economomist John Kenneth Galbraith.
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
But the two ends of the political spectrum share a fundamental blindness, which was nicely articulated by Ambrose Bierce in The Devil's Dictionary, 1911.
"Conservative, n. - A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others."
Hardin was a unique conservative, with regard to population and family planning. The conservative mob has some odd ideas, as does the liberal mob. Both tend to be homocentric, not ecocentric. I’m not fond of Hardin’s defense of our high standard of living, because its many “benefits” have so many costs. We may end up suffocating in the costs.
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