Day 300: The Tragedy of the Commons [i]

I have been counting the days – I’m not entirely sure if each passing day is a small victory or whether it is another day in which the desire for life has held me captive.
Almost a year – and the more days I count, it seems to me, whether victor or captive, it is a losing hand in which we have been given.
Sorry, I’ve been given.

What does it all matter if nothing I do will be seen or read or heard by anyone? If it will all end with no consequence?
It seems, also, that humans were put between Scylla and Charybdis.
If God knew all paths and ways of time, surely he would have known that Adam and Eve would have plucked the forbidden fruit, long before he breathed life into their clay. [ii] [iii]
And thus humanity was on a spiral downward from the beginning.
Humans were social creatures – desiring to be loved and to love, to live and to bequeath life unto others. And it is that nature that damned us.
We consumed and gave things that were not just ours, but our planet’s.
We broke away from the natural cycle of life – encroaching on the territory of other mammals and populations, cultivating our own food supply, creating our cities.
I don’t think it was a bad thing necessarily.
But all we did was take – never give.
Those beautiful, intimate moments,
The fragile nipple, the white linen sheets
We made love and decreased the mortality rate.
So we bred like rats, fruitful and multiplying, multiplying far beyond our means of production.
And we could not let our brothers and sisters die. We could not. [iv] [v] [vi][vii][viii]

We tried to feed ourselves and save ourselves, but all that did was cause more starvation and suffering.

There was such little habitat for such a quantity of inhabitants. [ix]
So we quarreled and fought, waging wars, over more land, more economic resources, more food, to survive.
We live pyrrhic lives. Every last one of us.
In extending our lives, we subjected ourselves to a living hell.
And those few who had the means to drastically increase their quality of life and their lives sought to increase it for themselves, leaving behind only scraps of scraps for the many. [x]
They made themselves untouchable with their wealth. They made strong and lofty walls, both literal and socioeconomic. They sought to forget we existed outside the walls, with ample food and drink and entertainment.

But all things are temporary, and no one escapes Death.
The mighty cried, “Peace! Safety!” But that day came like a thief in the night. Their walls were felled beneath the weight of nuclear terror. [xi][xii]

And all died each in the despairing posture of their fall. And the hands of every clock folded.
And Darkness and Decay and Death held illimitable dominion over all.
Perhaps it was just as well.
We would have consumed all the Earth, and eventually ourselves.
We would have made our environment too toxic to live in.
We would have replaced our ocean waters with plastic and melted the icebergs to compensate.
We would breathe smog more readily than steward the Earth we were given.

Triune God, Almighty Father, Son of Man, Holy Spirit, was it worth creating humanity? Did you love us when we razed and raped each other? Did you remember us fondly like you do the grains of sand on the dead shores? Was the good in our createdness worth all the pain and death? All the suffering? All the racism and inequality, the inhumane things we have wrought on each other? Was it very good?
But now, nothing remains.
Escaping the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, this lonely vessel strides into the void, stretching far away. [xiii]

[i] (Tragedy of the Commons) https://www.britannica.com/science/tragedy-of-the-commons
[ii] Prometheus Unbound, Percy Bysshe Shelley
[iii] First Cause/Cosmological Argument for God
[iv] Ishmael, Daniel Quinn

[v] I think it might be easy to interpret this as pro-ecofascism, but that is the exact opposite of what I want to express. The reality is that humans remain in a biosphere, interconnected with the organisms that surround us, often times creating artificial ecosystems, even more often artificial ecosystems that are detrimental to the organisms that find themselves in it. Our current lifestyles create so much waste unnecessary devastation (plastic, trash, deforestation, etc.). As for food shortages and famine, I think wresting environmental control from big corporations that cause most of our pollution is a good start. There’s also a tendency (albeit that has lessened slowly) to simply give aid to countries who need it as opposed to give them the tools to be independent and self-sustaining. Empowerment of our fellow humans must be key – we cannot be first-world saviors. We need to be more aware, also, as organisms in a delicate ecosystem who we depend on for our sustenance and what other predators we are hedging out in making our mark. That is not to say we are the same as other animals and should be treated as such – this mindset is an eco-fascist one and is unfair toward developing countries who don’t have a say (not by their choice, but by the choice of those who wield power). This mindset will only lead to shutting out aid for developing countries or culling precious human lives for the sake of “population control” and “lifeboat ethics,” which are not options up for debate at all. There can be no such thing in a world bent on human progress. There is no room for Nazism, fascism, racism, and genocide. We must not focus on individual and short-term profiting but collective preservation – meaning ALL of the human race.

[vi] (Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide) https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide

[vii] (What are the greenhouse gas changes since the Industrial Revolution?) https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/greenhousegases/industrialrevolution.html

[viii] (Revealed: the 20 firms behind a third of all carbon emissions) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed-20-firms-third-carbon-emissions

[ix] “We tried to feed ourselves and save ourselves, but all that did was cause more starvation and suffering./There was such little habitat for such a quantity of inhabitants.” The tragedy of the commons only exists is if the resource or resources in question are scarce or in the process of becoming scarce. The resources are being hoarded for selfish governmental and corporate purposes by the few and wealthy. The tragedy of the commons is often analogized as several ranchers with a grazing field that adds more cattle to the field to increase their profits. The few ranchers receive the benefit while the many cattle slowly starve. The cattle must break down the pens and become their own ranchers. The ranchers profit off of the cattle, and it is only fair that the cattle get their due.

[x] The eco-fascists and the wealthy, the upper class

[xi] Masque of the Red Death, Edgar Allen Poe
[xii] The Communist Manifesto, Marx, Engles
[xiii] Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley