If we are so smart, why are we trashing the planet? If we have more knowledge today than ever before in human history, why is the net effect so environmentally destructive? Such questions reach to the very core of who we are as a species and why we behave as we do. And the answers – if there are any simple ones – are likely to be equally deep.
But we get some helpful insights from two articles in the New Scientist , one written by a pair of the world's foremost biologists, Edward O. Wilson and David Sloan Wilson (Survival of the Selfless, Nov. 3/07), and the other in a review by Chris Mooney of a book by American sociologist, Andrew Szasz (Shopping Our Way to Safety: How we changed from protecting the environment to protecting ourselves , Dec. 8/07).
The article by the Wilsons returns to a question that Charles Darwin attempted to answer in his 1871 book, The Descent of Man. If natural selection by survival of the fittest is the basis for the evolution of species, then what explains the co-operative behaviour that is so fundamental in the lives of humans and many animals? Darwin's insightful answer should elevate everyone's estimation of him as both a scientist and a humanist. "Although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man or his children over the other men of the same tribe..." he wrote, "an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another."
The paradox is resolved, according to the Wilsons, because "groups containing mostly altruists have a decisive advantage over groups containing mostly selfish individuals, even if selfish individuals have the advantage over altruists within each group." If we can understand that benefit is conferred to individuals through social organization, then we can begin to understand why we need common goals, values, regulations and laws. Individual and group selection is accommodated by the civility, morality and order that constitutes a society.
For a society to function, however, the two opposing energies of individualism and altruism must maintain some semblance of dynamic balance. The rhythm of modern history shows what happens when this balance is lost. Early capitalism of the 18th century abandoned society's old rules and became an unfettered free-for-all among competing individuals, creating huge social inequalities which began to undermine civic structure. The unmitigated economic power of the winning industrialists created a series of reactions that began as political revolutions, matured into the uneasy truce of trade unionism and finally culminated in communism. And communism – think of it as enforced altruism – has created another reaction which is entrenched as the supremacy of individualism, so powerful today even after the official fall of communism.
This is where we are now. The momentum of individualism persists even amid evidence that unconstrained individual activity through a modernized capitalist system is becoming an environmental disaster. Which brings us to Szasz's book, Shopping our Way to Safety.
Szasz's argument is that our mania for individualism keeps us from making the collective decisions that could address our environmental problems. Instead of regulating out of existence those unsafe practices, processes and products that are pillaging and poisoning ourselves and our planet, we attempt to solve the problem by our individual choices. Our aversion to collective decisions forces us to try correcting our circumstances by private shopping decisions. Our modernized capitalism confuses corporate well-being with our collective well-being. Rather than regulating pesticides out of our food system, we get to choose organic. Instead of banning estrogen mimicking chemicals from plastics, we each must find a safer alternative. Sunscreen becomes our personal solution to a destroyed ozone layer, vitamin pills to depleted nutrition from industrial agriculture, bottled water to polluted lakes and rivers, compact cars to terrible fuel economy, farmed salmon to decimated wild stocks, air-conditioning to global warming.
We are left with "individualist, consumer responses", comments Moore, "when what we really need are solutions at the level of policy." As Szasz ominously reminds us, we've become like the many Americans of the 1960s who thought they could survive a nuclear holocaust by building their own back-yard bomb shelters. Or in Moore's words, "we've grown accustomed to opting for self-defense over concerted collective action to achieve change."
However, as a deteriorating environment makes the need for this change critical, contends Moore, the likelihood of it occurring is reduced because the elevation of individualism weakens government and undermines regulatory agencies, causing us to lose "our faith in collective solutions". In the process of "relying on consumerism as a last defence against environmental toxins", and by "attempting to shop our way out of the risk posed by chemical and other exposures, we're making clean-up less likely by imparting a false sense of security."
This security is the comfort of fools. Our lives are not safer when guns are endemic. Greater choice does not mean greater richness. Corporate profit does not trump environmental security. Personal gain is not synonymous with collective good. The tyranny of self does not create a higher order of civilization.
While individual choices are helpful in addressing our planet's rising environmental crisis, they are no substitute for the weight and guidance of laws we collectively make. Darwin was right on both counts. We need individualism and altruism. Now, for the sake of the planet, we have to get them back in balance.