Much of Friday's class was centered around crappy possible futures and human greed. Some possible outcomes to look forward to are an overcrowded earth where we eat dead people and are made to believe its soy, or we can live an awesome life, die at thirty, and pray that we are reincarnated. (good luck with that) Then we learned how because of human instincts and the population of the world, there is no hope for a communal, "common good" sense of living and we are all doomed to a life of selfish greed in which we try and steel each others bunnies or land. However there is a silver lining in all of this, maybe if we're lucky we'll all get to live out our lives before our kids start spoon feeding us processed "other white meat" or we fly into the air like Cirque du Soleil and spontaneously combust when we hit the ceiling.
BG
You may have been too distracted by the bunnies and/or flying, exploding people to grasp the tragedy of the commons. Human greed is not an essential component of it - only the survival instinct and the ability to do cost/benefit analysis are core assumptions. Individuals make rational, self-interested (but not necessarily greedy) decisions, and the outcome is collectively irrational.
ReplyDeleteThey say it tastes like chicken.