Only Take What You Need.

As a resource management expert, I recall studying the works of Garrett Hardin on the Tragedy of the Commons during my postgraduate classes at the University of Bonn. Although an Ecologist, Garrett Hardin, in his ground-breaking 1968 article extrapolated a number of social and economic rationales for ensuring that free access and untamed demand for a finite resource does not ultimately deplete such resource, either temporarily or permanently.

While commonly applied in the context of environmental management and sustainable development, the truth postulated by this theory, I would argue, is applicable to every facets of human existence.

Our world today hangs on a delicate and fragile beam; the ‘me-alone’ actions of a few of us are daily resulting in the lots of us starving and despairing. We have a situation now where the one-percents have ‘hijacked’ and depleted the resources owned by the hundred-percents leaving the fate of the ninety-nine percents hanging in the balance. Quite a paradox!

Not necessarily out of proactivity or rationality but rather out of insensitivity and utter disregard for the well-being of others, certain elements through their insatiable and misguided appetites, are accessing our ‘collective storehouses’ and are succeeding in depriving the many of us, our hopes and reasons for living.

These elements are everywhere across the globe, though they sometimes disguisedly garb themselves up, mimicking the lifestyles and passions of the ninety-nine percents. Unfortunately, they are foreign to the deep-seated cries of the Lots; they would not wait to be confronted with the aftermath of their misbehavior. These elements are spoilers and looters – they are not for real.

For me, wherever you find humans, you’ll find the propensities for normalcy as well as for abnormalities. Through personal choices, some individuals gravitate towards wrong-doings and consequently cause the larger population around them to bear the brunt of their misdemeanors. These are people who would not only mismanage the tangible resources meant for ALL, but would go further to trample on the intangible ones – the trust, the relationships and the opportunities that bind humanity together.

Today, gross imbalances exist within every stratum of our national and communal lives and we are at a point where nothing is really common anymore; we now have to deal with a tragedy because some of us have and are still taking more than what they need from what belongs to all of us.

I would submit that the foundation of the greed, corruption and subjugation that we see in our world today is an anti-social behavior that hides behind fear and wickedness and seeks to exclude others from accessing what should be common. This foundation is what we need to tackle and root out ruthlessly even as we collectively remind ourselves to take only what we need from our world and leave the rest for others.