I Agree with Professor Hardin (“Living On a Lifeboat," Bioscience, XX (October, 1974). p. 565) on one point. We can scarcely think without metaphors. But I also believe that wrong metaphors are a sure mark of muddled thinking. An analogy, of course, can never be totally coincident with the reality that it is intended to illuminate. But in some essential features at least it must conform. Hardin contends that the widespread use of the spaceship metaphor to describe the plight of our planet is inappropriate, except perhaps as a justification for certain pollution control measures. He proposes the lifeboat metaphor as an alternative.
That proposal, however, seems to me a rather clear case of advanced muddle-ment.” If there is one conclusion that is growing upon most informed persons in our time, it is the idea that we are all “in the same boat." Yet Hardin, with this proposed metaphor, would force us back into the outdated and fallacious world view of national sovereignty and of the autonomous existence of each nation. In fact no nation is an island or a lifeboat; we all sink together or float together. Professor Hardin may have talked with some recent Indian or East European immigrants who gave him the idea that all the world wants to come to America. But how preposterous an idea! There may indeed be a few naive people in India, for example, who think that the solution to the problems of their nation is for some Indians to migrate to the U.S.A., Canada, or Australia. But no responsible government official or writer in India would give expression to such a point of view.
I prefer Professor Hardin's earlier metaphor of 'the commons". But in the present case “the commons" is the world, and some of the sheep which graze it are more voracious than others. American “sheep" are consuming annually some thirty times as much per capita as are African or Asian sheep. The real danger to the commons comes from the former, who consume too much, elbow the others aside, and thus destroy the commons. If there is to be equitable population control, the American rate of growth should be about one-thirtieth of what it is in Asia and Africa. The only way to save the commons is to starve the “fat sheep" and stop them from multiplying at all! For that goal we require persons and governments with a sense of justice as fairness, in order to control the world Commons.
Population control on a world-wide scale is indeed necessary and essential. But whence this idea that all the spare room is in the “rich lifeboats" and that all the poor ones are overcrowded? In fact, many countries in Africa are really underpopulated in terms of the potential “carrying capacity" of their regional environments. Hence a nation like Tanzania refuses to have much to do with population control measures. Indeed, some of the most overcrowded nations are in industrially-advanced Western Europe.
But population control is only part of the problem of world justice, a question which turns as much on the relationships between nations as it does on the relationships within individual nations. The lifeboat ethics approach beclouds both these aspects of world justice. The spaceship metaphor, by contrast, deals with five critical dimensions of the justice problem in one stroke-- all five arising from the nature of the human impact on the planet we inhabit: a) population pressure, food scarcity, and the evils of urban agglomeration; (b) thoughtless and potentially catastrophic resource and energy utilization; (C) unrestrained consumerism and industrial development leading to pollution, loss of human values, and disruption of the eco-balance necessary for the continuation of life on this planet; (d) the foolish trends towards greater and greater defense spending involving colossal waste of resources and the threat of a nuclear holocaust; and (e) the partial blindness that besets human perception due to an unwarranted over-reliance on science and technology to uncover the dimensions of the cosmos.
None of these problems can be adequately tackled on the basis of a lifeboat metaphor, whereas the spaceship metaphor bids fair to be a suitable framework within which to incorporate all five aspects of the human impact on the environment. All five are international problems-- not matters for individual nations to tinker with on their own in their separate “lifeboats.”
Survival Ethics and Global Justice
All the “fatal metaphors" currently summoned to our aid in analyzing the problem of world hunger have one end in common-- survival. The trend in the advocacy of lifeboat ethics leaves little doubt about whose survival is being contemplated. Clearly, survival is intended for those who already happen to be on board a lifeboat in uncrowded numbers, with well-supplied larders, existing well within some determined “safety margin." This is the “third alternative” which Professor Hardin recommends in solution of the current distribution crisis. The first alternative-- survival of the human race as a whole-- is foolish to aim for. Complete justice leads only to complete catastrophe. Alternative two is to admit a few more persons to the well-supplied lifeboats. Yet it is difficult, Hardin argues, to find a criterion by which to choose those few; and making the choice sacrifices the small “safety factor” for survival. So why discriminate? Let the whole lot perish, so that the few may survive (vicariously, of course, for the sake of the others).
This is characteristic pragmatic reasoning, and Professor Hardin stands within this influential western tradition. He takes quite seriously the “pragmatic maxim" of C. S. Pierce (I878):
“Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object."
Truth can be judged only by its cash value. The general truth of the planet is the struggle for existence, and victory is to the strong and unprincipled. If nature is red in tooth and claw, then why shy away from apparent blood and cruelty, if that is finally necessary for survival?
Herbert Spencer already had made clear this important concept, which Windelband terms the naturwilssensehaftliehe way of thought. We understand reality in terms of the laws of nature, rather than through arbitrary questions of ideal value. Indeed, this form of evolutionary was germinally present in Bentham's formulation of utilitarianism which, by the turn of the last century had become the principal moral justification for egoism and self-interest.
The ethics we hear today in Garrett Hardin's lifeboat ethics is the ethics of nineteenth century Imperialism, Capitalism and individualism. It places survival as the higher value, and ignores the plea for justice as mere feeble groaning by the pusillanimous, the weak, and the condemned. It takes courage to ignore that groaning and to act decisively for survival. If one starts paying back to the poor of the world what heretofore has been taken form them (Such as restoring to native Americans a portion of their lands and possessions), then one has begun to dig one's own grave. Indeed, charity corrupts the poor. As Dr. Hardin states-- with the characteristic realism of the tough and the strong-willed, determined to survive-- “Every life saved this year in a poor Country diminishes the quality of life for subsequent generations."1 This is merely a thinly-veiled form of nineteenth-century imperialist-capitalist language, all too familiar to those acquainted with its history. If an improved wage is given the laborer, he will merely waste it on alcohol; so keep him poor and indigent for his own good. This, too, is a familiar rationalization of the unjust industrialists’ rapacious greed and selfishness. “Survival before justice"-- that is the creed of capitalism. Hardin merely offers us a contemporary reformulation and forthright presentation of this still-unobsolete creed.
Garrett Hardin is interested in a world government which is “sovereign in reproductive matters," but apparently not in a one which ensures justice to all. The United States is not a self-sufficient lifeboat. It is heavily dependent upon the markets and raw materials of the rest of the world. No nation is a self-sufficient lifeboat. There are no lifeboats, and we are not on lifeboats. We are in a spaceship on collision course, a spaceship without captain or crew, a spaceship without any lifeboat on board. We survive or perish together. That is the matter of fact. “Lifeboat Ethics" is a fantasy based upon a false metaphor; the spaceship metaphor, with all necessary qualifications, is the best we now have.
It is finally a matter of judgment to claim that justice is a higher value than mere survival. This is a judgment which I personally find informed by a Christian moral consciousness. It is undignified for persons to cling to life in selfishness and ignore the demands of justice. That way is morally erroneous and prudentially unwise. He who seeks to save his own life will lose it. He who is prepared to lose it for the sake of others will gain it. This does not mean that one should be a fool in opening the doors of one’s house to all comers or by distributing one’s largesse among all and sundry. The debate is not about open immigration policy or about aid of the “P.L. 480" type. The debate is about justice-- not Perfect justice, but more justice than we now enjoy. Professor Hardin, in my opinion, distorts the issue and confuses our judgment by pretending that the world is merely begging for free immigration to America and for free food aid. The demand from this corner of the globe [Kerala, India], at least, is that all should be able to work and all should be able to live, and that we should regulate together the opportunities for all. In opposition to Hardin, the demand is that the rich nations cooperate with the poor nations in creating a world structure with justice, and in working toward a civilization less consumption-oriented, less polluting, less wasteful, less war-minded, and more cautious about conserving eco-stability. This demand is made upon the collective will of humanity in order that we might bring our spaceship under conscious and rational control, and establish justice, equity and sanity on board.
Conclusion
Regardless of their many and diverse opinions, all participants in the present debate seem to agree on a few basic points. There is urgent pressure on humanity everywhere to perceive clearly and to act to address some problems which are so acute that they will, if left unresolved, lead to certain disaster. These problems uncover pressing needs for:
a) a federally related global agency for population control;
b) a federally organized international agency which controls and restrains resource and energy utilization on the planet;
c) a federally organized and responsible global agency with sufficient funds and authority for pollution control and for the regulation of industrial development;
d) a world authority for regulation of trade and commerce among the nations;
e) a world authority with power to enforce disarmament-- general as well as nuclear.
In detail, all these matters are controversial and difficult to implement. But humankind must ever set its mind to these problems, and seek manageable interim solutions while yet keeping these five, long-term objectives in view. The temporary myopia fostered by the current aura of crisis and by the current employment of the fallacious lifeboat metaphor must not serve to dissuade us from these momentous tasks.