Notes

  1. . Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, Thought, and Reality (New York: Wiley, 1956).
  2. . Richard D.Alexander, “The Evolution of Genitalia and Mating Behavior in Crickets (Gryllidae) and other Orthoptera,” Miscellaneous Publications of the Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan  133 (1967): 1–62.
  3. . Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).
  4. . Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 6th ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1927), pp. 197–98.
  5. . Christopher Stone, Should Trees Have Standing? (Los Altos, Calif.: William Kaufmann, 1974).
  6. . Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (New York: Modern Library, 1937), p. 423.
  7. . Paul B. Sears, Deserts on the March (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980).
  8. . The first step in the development of the idea of altruism‐as‐discrimination was made by Robert Trivers in his article, “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism,” Quarterly Review Of Biology 46 (1971): 35–57. Early critics protested that behavior that followed the rule of “you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours” was not altruism at all—which indeed it was not, in the pure sense. Trivers freed our minds from the shackles of the idealist's unreciprocated altruism, thus turning our attention to discriminating altruisms, the essential elements of social existence.
  9. . Harry W.Power, “Mountain Bluebirds: Experimental Evidence against Altruism,” Science  189 (1975): 142–43.
  10. . GarrettHardin, “Limited World, Limited Rights,” Society  (1980): 5–8.
  11. . Anatol Rapoport and A. M. Chammah, The Prisoner's Dilemma (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan press, 1965).
  12. . I have been told that Ralph Barton Perry (1876‐1957) coined the term “egocentric predicament,” but I have not verified this. The term is seldom used, which suggests that the underlying phenomenon is under something of a taboo. Social intercourse is facilitated by a belief in the sincerity of the “other,” which is an unknowable. Most traditional ethics is concerned with intentions, which are also unknowable. The law wisely is built on actions, but it frequently lapses into inferring intentions, as in the case of “fraud.” In our desire to shield our minds from the corrosion of doubt we usually suppress the sure knowledge that we can never know what goes on in the mind of the “other. “Social life is permeated with this suppression.
  13. . William Shakespeare, King Henry V, act 4, sc. 3, line 60 (1599).
  14. . Many disturbing examples of the treatment of whistleblowers are to be found in Alan F. Westin, ed., Whistle‐Blowing: Loyalty and Dissent in the Corporation (New York: McGraw‐Hill, 1981). For the particular story of a high‐level dissident in the General Motors Corporation, John Z. Dehrean, see J. Patrick Wright, On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors (New York: Avon, 1979).
  15. . Mitchell Satchell, “Frank Serpico is Coming Home,” Parade, October 12, 1980, p.
  16. . Thomas Curtis Clark, “The New Loyalty,” in The New Patriotism, ed. Thomas Curtis Clark and Esther A. Gillespie (Indianapolis: Bobbs‐Merrill, 1927).
  17. . Peter Singer, The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology (New York: Farrar, Straus & Girous, 1981). The quotation from Lecky was taken from this source.
  18. . Bertrand Russell, Authority and the Individual (London: Unwin, 1949), p. 17.
  19. . John Donne, “Devotion XVII” (1624), in The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne & The Complete Poetry of William Blake (New York: Modern Library, 1946), p. 332. I have modernized both spelling and punctuation.
  20. . Garrett Hardin, “An Ecolate View of the Human Predicament,” in Global Resources: Perspectives and Alternatives, ed. Clair N. McRostie (Baltimore: University Park Press, 1980), pp. 49–71.
  21. . A good presentation of this view, written before the word “ecolate” was coined, is found in Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966). For a more recent discussion see Garrett Hardin, Promethean Ethics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1980).
  22. . E. M. Forster, “What I Believe,” in Two Cheers for Democracy (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1951), p. 68.
  23. . MichealNovak, “The Social World of Individuals,” Hastings Center Studies  2 (1974): 37–44.
  24. . Samuel Johnson made this remark in 1775, at the age of 66, but he was not condemning true patriotism. As Boswell said, “Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm at which many will start: 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.' But let it be considered that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended Patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self interest” (Life of Johnson, James Boswell [New York: Dutton, 1976], 1:547–48). In other words, patriotism is the last of a scoundrel's many refuges, most of which bear the names of virtues.
  25. . Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York: Scribner's, 1970).
  26. . E. T.Whittaker, “Some Disputed Questions in the Philosophy of the Physical Sciences,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh  61 (1942): 160–75.
  27. . The combination of matter and energy into Einstein's Law, E=mc2, need not concern us here.
  28. . GarrettHardin, “Living on a Lifeboat,” BioScience  24 (1974): 561–68.
  29. . Garrett Hardin and John Baden, eds., Managing the Commons (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1977). See particularly chapters 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 11, 19, and 25.
  30. . William Forster Lloyd, “On the Checks to Population,” (1833) in Lectures on Population, Value, Poor‐Laws and Rent (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1968).
  31. . In passing, we note that sometimes there are advantages to treating information as property. Copyright and patent laws do so, and make it possible for the originators of good new ideas to reap profits, thus encouraging others to be inventive. The transferability of these property rights makes it commercially possible for enterprisers to make the investment needed to convert idea into product, a possibility foreclosed to a public patent (which creates a commons). But property rights in information are difficult to police; note, for example, the pirating of computer software and tape recordings.
  32. . Bertrand Russell, Authority and the Individual (London: Unwin, 1949), p. 27.
  33. . Will Durant, The Life of Greece (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1939), p. 554.
  34. . The last two lines of The Hollow Men (1925) are: “This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper” (T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays [New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1952], p. 59). Exercising his right to be elliptical and ambiguous, a poet always leaves us wondering whether he is unusually prescient or merely lucky.
  35. . Jean Raspail, The Camp of the Saints (New York: Scribner's, 1975).
  36. . Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (New York: Basic Books, 1980), p. 60.
  37. . Alexander Gray, The Socialist Tradition (London: Longmans, Green, 1946), p. 159.