Lessons from Home

The home, as Mary Douglas reminds us, is an "embryonic community." It is a small version (the seed, the germ) of life writ large.

So perhaps, when issues concerning multinational commerce and nutrient trading confuse us, or when the ethical motivations that gave rise to them get drowned in the waves of market capitalization, we can return to the more familiar place of home and remind ourselves what these structures are morally designed to do.

Douglas (citing Jon Elster) teaches us:

The well-stocked home presents in small the essential problem of the commons. Its reserves are going to be a common resource for the denizens of the home if they can restrain their impatience....

If the homesteader consumes all his reserves in time of plenty, the home will be unable to supply his future needs... Opportunism traduces his overall plan. Stealing from the future prosperity of his own home, he free-rides on his own attempts to make himself a home, but the free-rider is the same person as the one who is providing the good things. This is the beauty of the model: since whoever free-rides on the goods of his own community is going to lose by its destruction.

(Mary Douglas, “The Idea of a Home: A Kind of Space,” Social Research, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Spring 1991) pp. 295-296)

The earth is our shared home. Together, we are all the homeowner who will lose by its destruction. To raid the reserves of our shared pantry in times of plenty, as we did in the 20th century and continue to do today, first in ignorance and then in defiance, without planning for a way to replenish our stock is like the homesteader eating his seed corn.

It is not just greedy. It is not just irresponsible. It is death.

We cannot live off fish if there are no more fish to catch. We cannot sell our corn if there is no more corn to harvest. We cannot water our fields if there is no more water in the well.

We must plan for tomorrow amidst our satisfaction today. Otherwise there will be no tomorrows to enjoy.