Ethical and Moral Issues

2. Community Morality

If you live in a place that might be relatively safe in the wake of a general social collapse, then lots of people are going to want to come and share in your good fortune. If you allow them to do so, then your capacity to feed and house everyone will soon be exceeded, and your community too may collapse. If you are selective in whom you admit (and can keep everyone else at bay), then your chances of survival may improve; but with each additional person you accept, your resource "safety factor" will be reduced.

At the same time, you may face an overwhelming need to save family and friends who live outside the community. The only way you will be able to bring them into the fold and make it work, is by increasing your carrying capacity; and that means preparing well in advance. And if you commit to preparing, without really knowing what the future holds, you could end up looking foolish ... or you could save quite a few people.

The safest strategy would seem to be to tuck as many family and friends under your wings as you can, and then keep out everyone else who is not already a community member; and that is the conclusion reached by ecologist Garrett Hardin, in his 1974 "Living on a Lifeboat" thought experiment, except that he was talking about entire nations, not local communities. As global resources grow critically scarce, he argued, we owe it to posterity (and not just our posterity, but the world's) not only to eliminate immigration to our favored nations but also to stop sending aid to regions that have already exceeded their human carrying capacity, because to extend such aid will just make the problem worse.

Hardin was often accused of being hard-hearted — I myself hit him with this charge at a conference in 1974 (he appeared unimpressed) — but at least he had the courage to broach some very messy issues that are of pressing importance.

Getting back to your community, if you decide to keep everyone else out, are you prepared to take up arms to make your policy stick? Because when people get really desperate, they're going to come to get what you have. How would you feel about killing them? Do you think that would be moral? Plenty of folks in the Bible thought so — they defended their turf — and the vast majority of people before and since have agreed with them: it's OK to kill bad guys. Bad guys, in this context, means people who would probably be good if they weren't so hungry; but they are, so they attack you, which is immoral, so you kill them, and Good prevails.

Isn't moral clarity wonderful?

Of course, Mahatma Gandhi didn't see it that way. Nor did Jesus. They believed in the power of love. Gandhi didn't promote nonviolent civil disobedience just because it worked better than violence, but it often has. But will it work in a situation where everyone is terribly hungry, and many people are willing to kill to eat? Perhaps it depends on your definition of "work." If you think "work" means the bad (hungry and violent) guys kill all the good (hungry and nonviolent) guys, then feel really bad a few years down the road and tell their kids not to kill, well sure, that would be a nice outcome … but too bad there won't be any good guys around to appreciate it. If however "works" means that you decide that, for the long-term good of the human race (and maybe even for the overall, long-term minimization of violence), it is desirable that as many good people as possible survive, then you had probably better be prepared to cop a bit of a bad attitude. But only in self-defense, because if you go around attacking people then you're definitely violent: you're a bad guy. Unless maybe you're attacking them preemptively because you think they're about to attack you. Could get sticky (just ask President Bush).

Of course it goes without saying that if the Apocalypse comes along and you believe the good folks should survive, but you personally don't want to take up arms because you don't like loud noises and blood and stuff, then you may find yourself in moral as well as mortal danger.

Or perhaps, when pressed, you can come up with a better way.

Next: Issue 3— To Live or Not to Live?