SUNDAY, JULY 4, 2021
The Limits of the Golden Rule
Herschel Elliott, University of Florida (emeritus), 1999
Source: Population and Environment, Vol. 20, No. 6 (Jul., 1999),
pp. 561-565, The Limits of the Golden Rule
Under conditions of shortage, steady growth in population or in economic production makes living by the Golden Rule a blueprint for moral disaster.
The people of the Western nations generally accord the highest moral authority to the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth. Conservatives and the devoutly religious as well as most liberals, agnostics, and atheists never question the moral certainty of the principle that you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I will argue, however, that the moral authority accorded to this principle is ill founded. To live in a world with a scarcity of land and material resource and then follow the golden rule as if it were an unconditional first principle of ethics is a blueprint for moral disaster.
It is logically possible to give the golden rule a purely mental inter pretation. It can be taken merely to be a general rule about the state of mind people should have toward one another. If, however, it means only that people's behavior toward others be polite, considerate, benevolent, and honest, the rule places few demands on the physical world. And in this case it does nothing to satisfy people's material needsds—the necessary condition for life and for attaining all moral values. Hence this logically possible interpretation can be dismissed as morally trivial.
There is also an interpretation of the golden rule which makes physical as well as psychological demands. This is the traditional one. It is the one which will be examined.
Although it is hard to pin down the exact material intent of this moral principle, it cannot mean that moral persons should give up so much to others that there is nothing left to make life possible for the givers themselves. A balanced interpretation is that if your neighbor needs or would like anything, he or she ought to have as much of it as you. It is just possible, perhaps, that he or she can expect to have a little more of it than you, if you should happen to have a generous and self-denying disposition. In any case, the general intent of the golden rule seems to be that land, food, water, or natural resources should be available to every person who need them or who would like them. In short, it states a universal and unconditional material claim: People ought always to share the Earth's lands and resources equally and fairly.
Under the circumstances of growth in population or in the need for material resources, however, the golden rule can function well only in an infinite world?one in which no shortages of land or natural resources can ever arise. Then hard work and generosity can fill the ever greater human needs. Then full employment and a constantly expanding economy can supply the goods and services necessary to provide everyone with lives of increasing plenty. Thus to live by the golden rule may be a difficult but a physically possible ideal in any domain with an unlimited supply of land, energy, and biological resources.
By contrast, if people live by the golden rule in a finite world—one with limited lands and material resources, one already filled with competing yet interdependent life forms—then problems of allocation and denial are inevitable. For example, any food, land, or water, given to one living thing almost always must be taken away from some other. Furthermore, if ever the resources that human beings need come to be in short supply, then anything given to some people most often must be taken away from other people or from other uses important to human welfare. For example, land needed for suburban housing and industry must increasingly be taken away from farmers. Water needed to water urban lawns and flush urban toilets is taken away from natural rivers and estuaries. Timber for much needed housing is cut from dwindling forests. Land given back to a Palestinian state must be taken away from Israel. And when the U.S. government can no longer give 160 acres of good farm land to the poor and disenfranchised from all over the world, impoverished people still leave the rural areas that can no longer support them. They flee to big cities or else they seek asylum in other less crowded countries even though those countries usually have more people in them than their local environments can sustain. Such examples support an important empirical generalization. In a finite domain, a steady increase in population and/or a steady increase in the quantity of material goods and services that people need or want forces people to take ever more land, energy, water, and biological resources away from other people or from other important human uses in order to give them to people with more pressing needs.
It is especially to be noted that the golden rule contains no internal controls which make it morally obligatory to reduce a high rate of reproduction or to decrease the material demands of an economic system dedicated to growth. In fact, the golden rule incorporates feedback mechanisms which make it morally obligatory to satisfy human needs even when they are steadily increasing. But continual growth is physically impossible in any finite domain. Thus, when the steady increase in their use of material resources begins to cause shortages in land, fuel, water, and/or food, people on this finite Earth face a moral dilemma.
Under circumstances of impending scarcity there are two alternatives for living by the golden rule. One option gives moral priority to human needs and desires over those of all plants and other animals. The other recognizes the holistic needs of the world's ecosystems. It allows human beings to use only that given quantity of material resources which a healthy biosystem can sustain more or less indefinitely.
The first horn of the moral dilemma permits the Earth's land and biological wealth to be exploited without restraint as long as the resources are required to satisfy human needs. But because the world is a finite, not an infinite, sphere, its material and energy reserves are limited. And an ever increasing demand must eventually exhaust them. Then once modern civilization has used up the material resources necessary to support it, inevitably it will collapse. And with that, moral behavior committed to following the golden rule will cease to exist.
The other horn of the moral dilemma calls for a state-of-affairs that is about as bleak. Because it recognizes that the Earth can supply only a finite amount of land and resources for human use, human beings accept the moral obligation to exploit only the limited allocation of material resources which nature can continue to supply. Then as increasing numbers of people crowd into finite lands and/or as steady economic growth increases the material goods and services that people need or want, they must sustain themselves on the finite allotment of material resources. Under these circumstances, all that following the ideal of the golden rule can possibly accomplish is to assure that the ever diminishing per capita allotment of land and resources is shared equally and justly by all mankind. Thus, for example, the golden rule assures that every member of the families whose parents do not restrain their reproductive activity will share everything equally with the members of families having few if any children; those who have destructively exploited their own environments will have the same right to the material necessities of life which remain as those who have lived frugally so as to preserve the productivity of their lands. In effect, this horn of the dilemma mandates a slide down the slippery slope of ever increasing poverty. It makes the goal of moral behavior become a condition of universal poverty, starvation, and death. Hence this horn also entails the demise of any civilization dedicated to perpetual growth. And with it all moral behavior which remains steadfast in its loyalty to the golden rule would cease to exist.
CONCLUSION
Now the conclusion of this moral dilemma can be stated with logical rigor. Under one horn, the exhaustion of material resources will cause the demise of the civilization dedicated to perpetual growth. Under the other horn, an increasing shortage of material resources will force society to descend into poverty, starvation, and extinction. Both horns end in a similar breakdown of civilizations dedicated to growth. This possible scenario refutes the moral claim that the golden rule is an unconditional moral principle which ought to be followed at all times and under all circumstance. At best this rule is like a delicate potted plant that can flourish only under controlled and favorable conditions. To be precise, it can function as a moral guide only as long as nature can furnish an ample supply of the material resources needed to sustain human society. As a consequence, unless the human population and/or human physical demands are both stabilized at levels of resource use which the Earth's biosystem can sustain, it is morally absurd—indeed it is physically impossible—to try to live by the golden rule. When people allow steady growth to occur either in popu lation and/or in the consumption of material goods and services, then to live by the golden rule in a world with finite resources is a blueprint for moral disaster.
An Addendum on Moral Theory
Admittedly there can be legitimate debate as to whether or not the modern world is facing an environmental crisis. One can argue, for example, that human technology and future inventions will expand the material resources needed to support human civilization indefinitely. Or again it is possible to argue that modern technology working under the free market system can always find substitutes for any material necessities which may come to be in short supply. And it also may be argued that unending material growth in human prosperity is no longer limited by the physical boundaries of the Earth, because human beings can tap the resources of the solar system and the galaxy. The effect of these arguments is an empirical claim that human beings have made this finite world infinite for human purposes. These arguments claim that there are no insuperable material constraints on human behavior. Hence the present extensive exploitation of the Earth's resources does not jeopardize human welfare. Hence there is no need to confront conditions of scarcity and the golden rule can function indefinitely as a moral guide.
I believe that such arguments are mistaken because they display a hubris about human knowledge and freedom which disregards the law of entropy and the material basis of life. Nevertheless three factual assessments of the present human condition are possible.
- Scarcity is even now changing the character of moral behavior.
- The morally destructive effects of scarcity do not yet operate in the modern world and they may be postponed until some time in the distant future.
- Human ingenuity can be relied on to eliminate the morally disruptive effects of scarcity indefinitely.
Regardless which assessment is correct, this analysis changes the character of ethical debate. A priori arguments—those grounded in coherence, consistency, and the demands of reason, in loyalty to human ideals and unconditional moral principle, or in obedience to the will of God—can justify moral behavior only in a world of limitless lands and resources. No ethics grounded in priori thought can be applied unconditionally under conditions of increasing scarcity. Once this empirical principle is granted, the conditional conclusion of this analysis stands: if the conditions of an increasing scarcity of land and material resources should ever occur, then to live by the golden rule eventually will cause moral disaster.
Read:
A Moral Code for a Finite World
A General Statement of the Tragedy of the Commons
A Critique of Capitalism
