Tragedy of the Commons

In the movie “A Man For All Seasons,” Thomas Moore is counseling an ambitious young man to be a teacher rather than go into politics, where he might be tempted to fold on his values to bribery. He says, “Why not be a teacher? You'd be a fine teacher; perhaps a great one.” The young man asks in indignation, “If I was, who would know it?” Moore responds, “You; your pupils; your friends; God. Not a bad public, that.”

I had a high school science teacher named Eugene Clark. He was a retired geophysicist who had worked all over the world and his lectures consisted of the pictures he had personally taken of geological features, rather than the ones provided in the textbook. His love and knowledge of the material was contagious, and he was something of a celebrity in our high school because of the impact he made on all of us. I took every class he taught.

I remember very distinctly one class period in AP Environmental Science. He was explaining the phenomenon of the tragedy of the commons – “. . . an economic theory by Garrett Hardin, which states that individuals acting independently and rationally according to each's self-interest behave contrary to the best interests of the whole group.” Essentially, the way I’ve come to think of it, we recognize our own insignificance in relation to the entire population of the planet, and consider our contribution irrelevant. The simplest example in my mind is littering – one person doesn’t think about dropping a used cup on the side of the road because . . . it’s just one cup. The next person walking along doesn’t think about picking it up, because there are so many cups – picking just one up couldn’t possibly make a difference.

That lesson changed my life in many ways. For one thing, I’m neurotic about picking up trash. I went for a walk this morning and came back with two hand fulls of garbage. For someone who hates germs, it’s actually terrible. Some days, I wish that I could just walk past the dirty napkin outside my office and not worry about it. But I can’t – I just HAVE to pick it up, because if I don’t, it means I have bought into the mentality that I can’t make a difference.

 

This principle applies to the way we treat each other as well. I was having a difficult day yesterday – just feeling weary, frustrated and alone. I turned my phone off during a baptism I attended, and when I turned it back on, I had a voice message from my oldest sister. She was just calling to catch up and see how I was, and then she told me over the voicemail how grateful she was for me, and how proud she was of the kind of person I am. It was probably a simple thing for her – she just had the thought to give me a call. But it was exactly what I needed to hear and was so encouraging to me.

Mother Teresa is attributed with saying, “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.” There is so much pain and suffering, even just discouragement and exhaustion going around. It often feels like whatever we do or don’t do couldn’t possibly change anything. But that’s a lie. We just need to touch one person at a time, and it will make all the difference in the world.

The thing is, those kinds of things mostly go unnoticed. You don't get paid or promoted for cleaning up the break room when it's a mess. More than likely, no one will write a book about the time you stopped to help someone change a tire. Most of us will never win the Noble Peace Prize for being patient with others' mistakes. But I think that was Thomas Moore's point - be good, even if it doesn't bring you glory. Be kind, even when you don't think it will matter. Have integrity, even when no one is watching and you can see no personal gain in it.

And now you too can feel guilty every time you walk past a piece of trash on the sidewalk. You’re welcome.