Tragedy of the Mental Commons

[chlamor]

Tragedy of the Mental Commons

Driving to the airport to pick up a friend, I stop at a red light. My eyes wander to a bus-stop bench across the intersection. “Norma Whitfield—Your Real-Estate Connection.” Wham. Before I even have time to react, the advertisement has entered my mind and lodged itself between the folds of my thoughts. Another chunk of my mental landscape, grabbed without consent. There was nothing special about this ad. Every bench in the city is festooned with a marketing message, and my eyes have passed over thousands, possibly millions, like it before. Yet this time it stood out, somehow starker than the rest. Some balance inside me had tipped, and I suddenly felt saturated. My mental landscape had been overgrazed. Thirty-five years ago, Garret Hardin, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, authored a ground-breaking article in the journal Science that introduced an idea: the tragedy of the commons. Our survival was at stake, he argued, if we failed to open our eyes and realize that Earth’s physical resources were finite. Treating them as a free-for-all was no longer acceptable if we wanted to reduce human suffering and prolong our existence on this planet.

To illustrate the tragedy, he used the example of 14th-century common land. “Picture a pasture open to all,” he wrote. “It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons.” When a herder adds a cow to the pasture, he reaps the benefit of a larger herd. Meanwhile, the cost of the animal—the damage done to the pasture—is divided among all the herdsmen.

This continues until, finally, the herders reach a delicate point: as the pasture becomes overgrazed, each new animal threatens the well-being of the entire herd. “At this point,” Hardin argues, “the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.”

<snip>

Is it too late to reclaim our mental commons? It wasn’t long ago that our mindspace was still comparatively clean. I can remember—and I’m only 30—when bus benches were only for sitting on, when the wall above the urinal was just an expanse of white tile, when a fashion magazine was lighter than a phone book. I remember when you could let your mind wander as you filled your car with gas, instead of staring at a tiny billboard on the nozzle. When the attendant would say, “Thank you, have a nice day,” instead of pushing an Esso Extra card on you. Would it be that hard to get it back?

http://adbusters.org/the_magazine/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=120&Itemid=122

[mike_c]

1. OT, I know, but I still assign The Tragedy of the Commons...

...as required reading in my general ecology class. It's the only "classic" paper I assign. I still think it's one of the most important papers published in the latter half of the twentieth century.

And now we return you to the OP topic....