Chapter 8: Property and the Environment

Chapter Eight
Property and the Environment

I am in a world which is in me.

— Paul Valery

What are the implications of privately owned property for the world in which we live? In order to demonstrate the pragmatic significance of the principle being developed herein, it might be helpful to focus on one issue that, more than most others, has attracted the attention of thoughtful men and women. Using the environment as an example, how would human behavior differ if decision-making were diffused among each of us as property owners, rather than concentrated in the hands of those who exercise political power? What differences might we observe between social systems premised on private ownership rather than collectivism?

Protecting the environment has become a major concern in our world, perhaps reflecting Marshall McLuhan’s prognosis that the space program, by allowing us to see Earth from space, would cause us to think of the planet as an object, which we would then want to manage and protect.¹ His prognostication seems to have been born out, perhaps bringing Descartes’ “mind/body” dualistic thinking into the space age. By treating the planet as an object, environmental thinking has helped separate mankind from the earth, thus creating a state of conflict between humans and the rest of nature.

There is a legitimate concern for the question of how to address the problem of people dumping their entropic wastes into waterways, the atmosphere, and unowned lands. How does a private property analysis help us with instances of individuals, corporations, or governmental bodies polluting the air or rivers, or dumping toxic wastes that get into underground water supplies and cause injury or death to others? We need to ask ourselves whether the self-interested actions of private owners of property, dealing with one another in the marketplace, can prevent such problems.

In an age that has rediscovered the importance of mankind living in harmony with nature, it is often difficult to speak of the importance of decentralizing authority in society by decentralizing control over property. The fear is often expressed that, if men and women were free to do with their property as they saw fit, not only would social conflict escalate—as though society could become even more violent and disorderly—but that nature itself would be subjected to far greater dangers than at present. While these are worthwhile concerns, such fears reflect a total misconception of what is implicit in the decision making of a property owner.

To begin with, we must carefully define the nature of the problem. Using the pollution of waterways as an example, it is not the fact that industrial wastes get put into the water that creates the problem, but the fact that the water in question is generally not owned by the polluter. If, for instance, a manufacturer has built a totally enclosed lake on its land—with a thick, steel enforced concrete bottom to prevent seepage—and the manufacturer pollutes its own lake with sludge, would any injury to others have occurred? To those environmentalists who do not see these issues in any coherent, philosophically principled way, the response may be that there has been a “wrong” done to the water itself. But unless we are prepared to admit other species, trees, waterways, rock formations, the atmosphere, and the rest of nature into that body of legally recognized “persons”, a position that would pose serious problems in our efforts to foster our own survival, such arguments will amount to little more than empty tautologies. But if we apply a property analysis to the question, we can make clear distinctions between injurious and noninjurious acts.

The environmental problems with which so many people concern themselves represent not the failure of private ownership of property, but the failure to live in accordance with such a system by identifying and respecting claims. Landfill problems, the dumping of nuclear or other toxic wastes, the emission of smoke and chemical particulates into the atmosphere have, for the most part, been occasioned either by the absence of private ownership, or the refusal to have one’s actions governed by such a principle. Who does own the air and waterways, the marshlands and forests, the oceans, mountain ranges, and aquifers? Who is entitled to make decisions as to how these resources are to be utilized, and for what purposes? Are there limits to the range of one’s actions and, if so, how are these to be determined? Furthermore, unless one is so innocent as to believe that his or her preferences, alone, are entitled to the respect of reasonably minded people, it must be understood that whether a parcel of land is to be used for the growing of organic vegetables or as a dumpsite for radioactive wastes, is a question that must be answered by someone.

Because entropy is a form of energy unavailable for productive use, many of us are inclined to dispose of it in as cost-free a manner as possible. The pollution problem arises from a willingness of the polluter to regard dumping it upon the property of others, rather than his own, as his most efficient means of reducing this cost. In Prigogine’s and Stenger’s model of “dissipative structures”, wherein living systems are able to generate a more complex order by dissipating entropy into the environment,²the crucial property issue is raised: into whose environment is the entropy to be dispelled?

Most of us operate from the assumption that social order is to be defined in terms of whether the behavior of others is conducive to our ends. As the “war on drugs” and other campaigns against victimless crime activities illustrate, such inquiries rarely distinguish between actions that cause identifiable harm to others, and those that simply annoy our sensibilities or fail to satisfy the expectations we unilaterally project onto others. It is no surprise that such an assumption finds expression in environmental matters. If we can become aware that our values are only subjective preferences, rather than objective standards, and if we can appreciate the orderly patterns that inhere in complex systems, we may become less self-righteous about the decisions others make for themselves.

If trees are cut down, for instance, orderliness is generated in the paper upon which people may write, and in the lumber used to build houses. Likewise, if trees are not cut down, the ecological orderliness of the forest will be maintained. Whose preferences should prevail, and upon what principles will the making of either choice depend? No matter how strongly we insist upon the primacy of our preferences, no matter how much moral foot-stomping we engage in, the fact remains that our choices are grounded in subjectivity. There are no objectively “correct” decisions to be made, but as with all human action, there are cost and benefit tradeoffs associated with whatever choices we make. But who is to incur the costs, and who is to enjoy the benefits of human action? It is the private property principle, alone, that allows each of us to pursue our respective preferences, as well as to enjoy the benefits and bear the costs thereof. Through voluntary exchanges in the marketplace, each of us is free to increase the intensity of our demand for one form of usage over another and, thus, try to persuade other owners—through the pricing system—to respond to our preferences.

There are, of course, significant consequences associated with the questions of how, and by whom, decisions regarding property are to be made. Because they will have to bear the costs of the choices they make, owners of property, operating on the basis of the property principle, will be required to take into consideration different factors in their decision making than will non-owners. Owners will always have a more diligent and focused concern regarding their property than will non-owners making decisions over the property of others. Such resources as forests, lakes, mountains, and marshlands are capable of being bounded and controlled by exclusive owners. To the degree such private ownership is established, the owners will have an incentive to protect their value by not allowing their property to be damaged, whether by themselves or others. Such property becomes a producer of resources for future productive use, and self-interest motivations can be relied upon to maximize both present and future benefits to be derived therefrom. The common practice of farmers rotating their crops in order to protect the soil, and of lumbering companies replanting trees on their lands provide such examples. Should one choose to become an owner of land with the intention of preserving its undeveloped character, the property principle would support that decision as well.

But to the degree any of these resources are not capable of being privately owned (e.g., an entire river or river system, the ocean, or the atmosphere), and/or have been collectively claimed by the state on behalf of the “public,” (e.g., national parks and forests), confusion of ownership will result. As we shall see in chapter nine, belief in the idea of a collective ownership in unowned or state owned property gives rise to implicit assumptions about the personal use of such resources. If I should think of myself as one of a multitude of co-owners of a major river, or the atmosphere, or forest land, why wouldn’t I be inclined to regard it as being within my collective “rights” to use such resources for whatever purposes served my interests? To proclaim collective ownership creates, in the mind of a listener, the mistaken assumption that he or she is an owner and, thereby, entitled to control the property for their purposes. As with so many other examples of state action, this practice generates unintended consequences that are often contradictory to their stated purposes.

The confusion of control brought about by the idea of collective ownership, has been a major contributor not only to environmental problems, but to the conflicts that necessarily arise whenever government agencies act to further policies about which there is widespread disagreement among men and women who like to imagine that such entities are “theirs” to direct. Isn’t this confusion what has turned government schools into attractors for conflict over whether such schools will or will not employ bilingual education, or teach sex education, or teach creationism rather than Darwinism—a confusion that tends not to arise in privately owned schools? Whether the redwoods are to be preserved or harvested; whether “public” lands are or are not to be used for nuclear weapons testing or for nuclear waste disposal; what types of radio or television programming are to be permitted on so-called “public airwaves”; whether rivers are to be used for toxic waste disposal, are just a few of the irreconcilable conflicts arising from a commitment to collective ownership.

Given the general confusion as to the nature of property and the widespread disrespect for private property, and given that almost all of us have less of an interest in protecting other people’s property than we do our own, it should come as no surprise that many of us regard the property of others as appropriate sites for the disposal of wastes. Let us suppose that the United Updike Company has dumped toxic wastes into the ground, and emitted noxious fumes from its factory smokestacks. Is it not clear that the company has failed to control its property (i.e., its byproducts) so as to prevent trespasses to others—that it has allowed the range of its decision making to exceed the boundaries of what it owns? If those toxic substances seep into the water supply of the neighboring town, and a child drinks that water and becomes ill, is it not evident that the company committed a trespass upon that child? Likewise, when the fumes from the smokestacks are breathed into the lungs of a young woman, or the toxic wastes that get into a nearby river end up in fish that are later eaten by her, has the company not trespassed upon her?

In a culture in which the nature of privately owned property is neither generally understood nor respected, such polluting practices tend to be referred to as “environmental” or “health” problems. But, in fact, they represent what economists call “externalities”—i.e., the failure of an actor to bear all the costs associated with his or her actions. This company is externalizing—or “socializing”—the costs of disposing of its entropic industrial byproducts by forcing them to be borne by others. An externality, in this context at least, is only an economist’s way of talking about property trespasses, a failure to respect the inviolability of another’s boundaries. The government, largely through its court system, has historically allowed businesses to engage in such trespasses so as to avoid firms having to bear expenses that might be detrimental to them. Such decisions by the courts have helped to confuse our understanding of the orderly nature of a system of private property.

A similar problem arises from what is called “the tragedy of the commons.”³ When grazing lands are owned in common by various sheep farmers, each farmer will have an economic incentive to continue adding sheep to his herd to graze upon such lands. If any one shepherd were to refrain from adding sheep, each party reasons, the others would nevertheless add their sheep, which would work to his comparative disadvantage. As a consequence, each farmer will find it to his self-interest not to restrain his sheep’s consumption of grass, leading to the ultimate destruction of the commons. These dynamics, which are also at work in such unowned areas as oceanic fishing territories, underlie a number of environmental concerns.

While this dilemma is often presented as evidence of the harmful nature of individual liberty, it in fact reflects the adverse consequences of collective ownership: what is owned by everyone is owned by no one. There is no one decision-maker who has both the unfettered control and the responsibility for the property, no single owner upon whom all the consequences of usage will devolve. If such lands were divided into privately owned parcels, no owner would need to fear the over-consumption of his grass by his neighbor’s sheep. When property is privately owned and boundaries are respected, there is no division between those who will incur the costs and those who will enjoy the benefits, a lesson that even small children learn from a reading of The Little Red Hen. Indeed, the “enclosure acts” in England privatized such collective lands for the purpose of resolving this problem.

The owner knows that if he is to continue enjoying the benefits of his property, he must be responsible for the costs of its maintenance, including a self-rationing of his use of it. The property owner makes his own calculations, assesses his own risks, and bears the consequences, be they good or ill. Each farmer will have an incentive to forego immediate consumption and not overgraze because, to do otherwise, will result in long-term costs to himself that outweigh the short-term benefits he would derive. This is why the authority to control one’s own property fosters responsible behavior: the actor experiences the consequences.

This analysis also helps to explain the troublesome nature of political decision-making: those who benefit from political action (e.g., “special interest” groups) do so disproportionately to the costs they incur in promoting such ends. Ironically, this is what politically-oriented conservation and environmental organizations have in common not only with most other lobbying groups, but with private and governmental entities that socialize their costs by imposing them, via pollution, on the general public. All governmental action involves the creation of externalities, in that some people (e.g., taxpayers, property owners) are forced to incur burdens not of their own doing or choice. Like the United Updike Company, conservationists and environmentalists who call upon the state to regulate the property interests of others, receive benefits whose costs they prefer others to bear. The state, like the polluter, is externalizing costs.

We should not be surprised that so many of us find it attractive to divide the enjoyment of benefits from the bearing of costs. Because we are self-interest motivated, we desire to keep our gains for ourselves, just as we are eager to share our losses with others, an attitude that keeps insurance companies in business. There is nothing remarkable in this, nor is there a property violation regarding private insurance, as insureds freely contract, for a fee, for the sharing of risks. But such motivations ought to be kept clearly in mind when assessing the relative merits of any governmental programs. This motivation, when combined with a refusal to adhere to the property principle as a way of limiting the scope of our pursuits, produces a disruptive dichotomy.

This Janus-faced tendency can be illustrated in an example. If X’s neighbor constructs a hideously grotesque shack on his land and paints it chartreuse, X will bring a nuisance action and insist that the neighbor compensate him for any perceived diminution in the market value of his home, even though the neighbor had committed no trespass. If, on the other hand, that same neighbor had built a beautiful mansion that increased the value of X’s property, X will not consider himself obliged to share his gain with the neighbor who made it all possible. X will, instead, content himself with the thought that his good fortune was simply one of the benefits of a free market system!

Likewise, real estate developers and the owners of professional sports franchises have figured out ways to get local governments to use their powers of eminent domain to take, by legal force and at taxpayers’ expense, lands belonging to others, while, at the same time, forcing taxpayers to pay for the construction of facilities such as sports stadiums. When those who reap the benefits of such acts are privileged by the state to pass their costs onto unwilling parties, property trespasses are occurring in every bit the same way as when a manufacturer dumps its unwanted costs onto others in the form of pollution. Were we to learn to think in a principled manner and to become aware of the consequences that are implicit in our behavior, we might discover how government policies we so eagerly impose upon the lives and property of others, can produce troublesome externalities we had not intended.

There seems to be a deeper meaning to environmentalist thinking that requires exploration. Our willingness to identify ourselves with institutions and other abstractions, and our preoccupation with “ego-boundaries,” are not confined to separating ourselves from other people. One of the many victims of our divisive thinking has been nature itself. Western civilization— drawing upon the Old Testament’s “Book of Genesis”—has long had a separatist attitude toward the rest of nature. “Man” was to have dominion over all living things on earth, a vertically-structured relationship founded upon the subservience of nature to human control which, like any political relationship, is bound to produce conflict. The biblical view of nature as being inferior to man is further evidenced in the “garden of Eden” story, wherein mankind was expelled from “paradise” and sentenced to what Westerners have since regarded as a second-rate neighborhood. Even our language reflects our sense of alienation from the earth, as we speak of being born “into” the world instead of “emerging from” it. If our daily thinking was better informed by what the biological sciences have to say about the origins of life, we might better understand how mankind has grown from the earth; that the earth is our home, not our prison; and that nature does not need to be subdued or dominated, but only understood and appreciated.

By regarding ourselves as dominant over nature, we made ourselves separate from it. In so doing, we also made ourselves both superior and inferior to it. Our superiority is expressed in our anthropocentric power over the world, while our sense of inferiority derives from our belief that, having been banished to earth for the “sin” of being human, that we became trespassers upon the property of others. This idea is so deeply embedded in our thinking that it emerges not only in the environmental and animal “rights” movements, but in the condemnation of Europeans for having discovered the “New World,” as well as in the notion that humans ought not to behave in ways that “upset the balance of nature” (i.e., to exhibit any human influence). Such attitudes, while ostensibly respectful of nature, divide mankind from it and, consequently, generate the very conflicts that the environmentalists condemn. How does mankind—an expression of nature—upset the “balance” in the environment any more so than the wolf or crabgrass, each of which seeks to expand its presence in the world? If we are “apart from” nature, instead of “a part of” it, the rest of nature will continue to be just one more “other” to be subdued and controlled.

It should be clear that if we are only able to act in the pursuit of our respective self-interests, and if we continue to insist upon thinking of ourselves as differentiated from the rest of nature, including our neighbors, we will continue to pursue our interests in dominating, strife-ridden ways. If, in our concern to protect nature from the consequences of our thinking, we are unable to move beyond the simplemindedness that insists upon posing the “good guys” against the “bad guys;” of “socially responsible” activists against “greedy” businessmen, we shall only continue to play out the vicious, coercive games of “us against them” that have gotten us precisely to where we are now. In this regard, the industrial polluter and the politically-active environmentalist are both engaging in the same conflict-ridden war against nature: socializing the costs of pursuing their interests by disrespecting the boundaries of others.

Perhaps there is a direct correlation between our disrespect for nature and our disrespect for the concept of private property. After all, polluting the air, waterways, or lands of others, are just other ways of disrespecting property boundaries—of not confining our decision making to what is ours to control. Why should we be surprised that, in a society that has so little regard for private property, people would fail to make the distinction between what is and what is not within the proper range of their behavior? Furthermore, experience with collective ownership should inform us of the advantages of privately owned property. We know, for instance, that the owner of a parcel of land, or a business, has a greater incentive to care for and conserve the value of the property than does a non-owner. As we saw in the “tragedy of the commons,” individuals have an incentive to take as much from collectively owned property as they can. Finally, when the state sets the social example of disrespecting the lives and property of others, why should we be surprised to discover men and women exhibiting the same disregard not only for their neighbors, but for the rest of nature?

Perhaps it is more appropriate to begin our inquiry not with the question of whether private ownership and voluntary practices can protect the rest of nature, but whether political systems—founded as they are on force and conflict—could ever conceivably do so. The range of our actions will be limited either by the property principle confining us to the boundaries of what we own, or will be defined by state regulations. The latter approach, which does not necessarily invoke propertybased limitations, tends to socialize the costs of satisfying the preferences of those unwilling to incur the costs of negotiating with owners.

Lest we be seduced by the trappings of political power in the course of our desire to enhance and protect life, we ought to ask ourselves whether we are respecting life, human or otherwise, when we confront it with coercive practices. Our current social pathology is grounded in “command and control” systems that rob life of its self-directed, autonomous, and spontaneous character. Since nature is the expression of life on this planet, any system that denies life its self-controlling qualities, reflects hostility to nature itself. Any who doubt the dispirited and dehumanizing consequences of trying to control life processes, are invited to compare the quality of the lives of American Indians living freely within their traditional tribal cultures, and those living on government managed reservations.

I had a discussion with a number of my students one day on the question of whether the state, under the guise of protecting people’s health, ought to have the authority to prohibit the sale of foods made with trans-fats, artificial sweeteners, chemical preservatives, or other ingredients deemed “harmful.” Should the state be allowed to prohibit individuals from smoking, or from engaging in dangerous activities? A number of these students acknowledged such rightful powers by the state, arguing that if people didn’t look after their own health, the government should do it for them. I asked them if the essence of liberty did not include people being free to calculate their own risks and to act on the basis of what their judgments informed them. They dismissed this suggestion as “idealistic.” I reminded them of a previous political leader who was bent on using the power of the state to eradicate cancer, an end that included the prohibition of tobacco. I informed them that this man favored government-supported medical research, but not upon animals and that, in his obsession with making his country healthy, certain categories of human beings came to be looked upon as “diseases” to be eradicated. That leader’s name, of course, was Adolf Hitler,⁴ a revelation that seemed not to dissuade these students from their ambitions to save humanity from the consequences of “wrong” choices.

I asked these students why, since they had no respect for other people, they cared whether they lived or died as a result of their lifestyle habits? “The essence of life,” I suggested to them, “is autonomous self-direction, and you are prepared to deny this to those who would make decisions in their lives that differed from the choices you would make in your own.” I received plate-glass stares in response, and suggested to them that they be wary of those who seek to sterilize the world.

Many self-styled “environmentalists” express concern over what they perceive as the menace of commercial or residential development, a matter that does not preclude them from enjoying a home that was the product of earlier such developments. Their conditioned response has been to call upon the state to limit, or even prohibit, development in areas they would like to see preserved. Such efforts generate conflict not only between themselves and other property owners, but also with the state and those affected by the restrictions. A more socially harmonious approach, one whose efficacy is a matter of record, is found in agreements with property owners. A number of privately owned, voluntarily supported organizations have been responsible for preserving literally millions of acres of forests, wetlands, watersheds, redwood trees, and other natural resources. Some environmental groups have made increased use of contracts, rather than state violence, to purchase wetlands, forests, water rights, or other property interests from owners, to accomplish their objectives. “Conservation easements,” purchased from landowners rather than forcibly taken by regulation or eminent domain, have become an integral part of a system of voluntarily supported environmental practices.⁵I know of two communities whose residents were desirous of preventing a developer from purchasing adjoining land for the purpose of creating a housing development; individuals committed their own resources to purchase the targeted land from its owner, thus controlling by property ownership the nature of their town.

When we lived in the Midwest, our family had a membership in a very large, private forest preserve along the Missouri River. This organization accepted no government money, relying instead on the voluntary support of people who valued the preservation and expansion of the forest. When local residents found injured wild animals, as we did on one occasion, they often took them to this preserve, where a veterinary staff cared for the creatures until they could be returned to the wild. While recovering from their injuries, these animals were displayed in cages that created a transient zoo that people could visit. Similar organizations provide such facilities and services throughout the country. In contrast to those who believe that a respect for the environment necessitates a separation of humanity from “nature,” this forest preserve encourages hiking along its trails, offers instruction in plant and animal life, and even sponsors programs such as Halloween trail walks for its members.

A major problem with a politically-based environmental movement is that it seeks to compel a kind of identity with and respect for nature where it does not freely exist. This is the underlying shortcoming of all political programs: by forcing people to act inconsistently with their own non-trespassing preferences, the state introduces conflict into society. Because there is a division between what individuals want to do with their own lives and property and what the state compels them to do, the result is to generate the increasing lack of integrity one witnesses in politically-structured societies. We are now suffering the political, economic, social, and environmental consequences of having learned to separate and distinguish ourselves from the world—including our neighbors—in which we live. In the words of Mark Twain, many of us tend to believe that “[n]othing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.”⁶ Unless we can fundamentally alter our thinking, we may be destined to make human society even more intolerable. But most environmentalists, like social reformers generally, have little patience with mankind learning a new paradigm; like fanatics of every persuasion, they want results now! Thus, they try to force the consequences of an altered consciousness without such a transformation first taking place.

In spite of the limited understanding associated with all complex systems—the interrelated nature of the earth’s geologic, atmospheric, and life processes in particular—many environmentalists presume to impose upon all mankind standards of conduct that will bring the rest of us into conformity with their inconstant speculations. Should any of us believe these warnings to be valid, we are capable of effecting a change of consciousness that would cause us to change our behavior. To that degree, we would be reducing, or even eliminating, our contributions to what we perceive to be a problem. But such individualized transformations are rarely satisfying to those in a hurry for change.

There is a self-righteousness in employing force to bring about the kinds of behavioral changes that would otherwise result from an alteration in thinking. Such arrogance underlies the modern tendency to treat preferences, values, tastes, and attitudes not as a range of options from which men and women can freely make choices, but as political issues to be resolved by compelling an undeviating conformity upon others. Since tastes and values are constantly changing to accommodate vacillating fashions, having the state enforce any set of preferences upon others tends to frustrate those whose own understanding is at a different stage of development. It may also arrest further change within those whose choices have been preempted. Those who insist upon employing such methods rarely bother to inquire into the costs—particularly the personal and social conflict—associated with such practices.⁷ But then, patience, as well as a sense of humility and perspective, are rarely exhibited by the zealots of any social or political cause who, burdened by the illusion that their values represent “objective” truths, are much more inclined to see existing conditions as crises to be overcome at all costs.

Those desirous of reforming the behavior of others have an impatience with the marketplace because of its foundation in people freely committing their own resources to ends they value. A free market analysis only tells us how we humans make decisions, not what decisions we will make. The content of our decisions, in other words, depends entirely upon our personal, subjectively determined preferences—upon the content of our consciousness. If a person principally values monetarily quantifiable results, these values will predominate in the pursuit of his or her self-interest. On the other hand, to the extent one values such non-quantifiable factors as aesthetics, sensitivity to the suffering of others, the pursuit of abstract philosophic principles, or simply living in harmony with others, these values will be given great weight in the motivations of such a person. There is no better evidence of the economic ignorance of most people than the commonly held assumption, too often fostered by economists themselves, that economic motivations are always and exclusively defined in terms of increased monetary rewards. The history of the early private turnpike companies in America demonstrates a continuing commitment to the building of roads known, in advance, to be monetarily unprofitable. Broader social benefits were apparently the motive for persons to invest in such projects.⁸ Those are few and far between who understand that a person who refuses a lucrative defense contract out of a revulsion against war is also making a profit-maximizing decision. All of us act in order to be better off afterward than we would have been had we not acted. How each of us defines “better off” is subject to as many translations as there are values that motivate us.

The free market, in other words, is a barometer of the strength of people’s varied tastes and values, as reflected in their willingness to devote their own assets to a purpose. By contrast, the relatively cost-free expression of values in public opinion polls or voting booths tells us very little about the extent of people’s commitments to such ends. It is not the marketplace that limits any of us to the pursuit of material values, but the limitations we have placed upon our own thinking. Furthermore, the marketplace maximizes the opportunities to advance our values by allowing us the unrestrained authority to invest our property interests on their behalf. One who is sensitive to the importance of protecting the environment is capable of developing a market, a demand for the satisfaction of these values, as surely as the more narrowly focused, monetarily defined profit maximizer will seek the satisfaction of his interests. Whether we choose to do so or not is but a reflection of the intensity of our demands in choosing to pursue our values.

Impatience with the values of others is commonplace in our politicized world. Indeed, the disregard most of us have for the inviolability of privately-owned property derives from the realization that, in a free society, outcomes we desire depend upon the choices others make regarding their own lives. It is far better, many of us reason, to compel others to comply with our interests. Such attitudes prevail not only in commercial or industrial pursuits, but in the fostering of social, ideological, or other philosophic values.

As individuals, we may experience some insight into a fundamentally different sense of our relationship with other people and the rest of the world. This new vision begins to inform our consciousness in a significant way. But instead of allowing this experience to play itself out within our mind, many of us become anxious to confirm its validity by projecting onto others the behavior that we believe are its consequences. We become driven to control the behavior of others so that their conduct will reflect our new vision. In such ways do we try to bolster our own newly-discovered resolve by imagining that the coerced obedience of others is a reflection of shared values. As with so many other aspects of our lives, we have learned to regard our inner experiences as unimportant. Rather than permitting such insights to develop themselves into a radically altered personal consciousness, we settle for the ersatz transformation of our outer world, which we deceive ourselves into believing can be produced through coercive, political means. Is it any wonder that we rarely become what we dream or feel?

If you and I are to experience a spiritual revolution, I suspect part of the change will consist in our learning to think of “life” not just as a material entity, but also as a process—less as a noun than a verb. As long as we regard life only as objects and things, we will—as McLuhan suggested—want to manage and “care” for it in some smothering, paternalistic fashion. Most of us have treated life as little more than a “resource,” useful for the achievement of the ends of those wanting to control it. This is what has made conservationists and environmentalists such a depressing lot. Like missionaries of every faith, religious and secular, they are able to recite the gospel and exude all the proper shibboleths, but exhibit very little of the élan vital that is the very essence of life.

As suggested earlier, we need to remind ourselves that our interest in pursuing such nonmaterial values as spirituality, aesthetics, alternative lifestyles, physical and emotional wellbeing, environmentalism, and a host of other philosophic interests, has arisen as a consequence of our having figured out how to produce material prosperity. The same conditions of respect for liberty, the inviolability of property boundaries, and voluntarily-based relationships that allowed us to discover the superiority of the marketplace for our material well-being, will provide the same base from which to pursue other ends as well.

The arrogance that seduces men and women into a passion to control others should be tempered with an awareness of orderly systems that do not arise from the limited understanding of the conscious mind. As the study of chaos and complexity illustrate, the ability to foretell the outcome of a course of action is dependent upon the identification and analysis of so many interconnected and constantly fluctuating variables as to make the behavior of complex systems—including the environment—uncertain.

Much of the environmental movement is driven by an implicit faith in the ability of state-directed systems to identify and regulate to desired ends factors affecting global temperatures, the ozone layer, population growth, the extinction of species, the depletion of rainforests and agricultural lands, pollution, and other matters. Far too often, this article of faith is more an expression of fidelity to an antiquated, abstract dogma than a product of empirical inquiry. It is reinforced by the deeply engrained assumption that a complex world operates on the basis of linear regularities rather than the inconstant dynamics of nonlinearity. When predictions of mass human starvation, species extinction, increased numbers of hurricanes, and environmental collapse have been measured against the resulting data, the expected doomsday scenarios have failed to materialize.⁹ This failure of expectations has not prevented the eighteenth-century social prophet, Thomas Malthus, or such modern descendants of his views as Paul Ehrlich, Edward O. Wilson, Lester Brown, and others, from continuing to be revered even as their dire predictions have failed to materialize. Perhaps an increasing familiarity with the dynamics of complexity will make us more aware that the capacity to predict rests upon a “sensitive dependence upon initial conditions,” that such prescience can never be known to us, and that the power to coercively regulate human affairs in such matters would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of people whose hubris will not allow them to see the limitations of their understanding.

One of the propositions uniting the environmentalists is that we humans are depleting the ozone layer, and that this condition will be detrimental to all life on the planet. Because we have only recently discovered this hole in the ozone, we have no way of knowing what conditions existed there before our presumed collective depletion of it, nor what state of the ozone is or is not conducive to life. Furthermore, while “global warming” is an established fact, there is no consensus—the politically-inspired speculations of Al Gore and Bill Clinton notwithstanding—among scientists as to how much of this change has come about as a result of human activity, and how much is an expression of millions of years of temperature fluctuations that preceded human presence on Earth.¹⁰ The suggestion has even been made by some scientists, that global warming may increase speciation by expanding territories into which more life may flourish,¹¹a conclusion that would seem to contradict earlier views that such warming would foster the extinction of some species.¹²Furthermore, before giving too much credence to the gloomy forecasters of the effects of “global warming,” let us recall those equally authoritative voices (some of them the same persons!), who two and three decades ago were prophesying a “nuclear winter” and the return of an “ice age.” What this suggests is that the dire warnings of the environmentalists are highly speculative at best, and remain subject to the admonitions of the students of “chaos” about the inability to make extended predictions regarding complex systems. If the environmentalists are in error, governmental policies extended across the entire planet are likely to be quite costly to all of life.

Nor should the rashness of those who presume to control the life processes on earth go unchallenged in the face of such scientists as James Lovelock who has offered the “Gaia” hypothesis ¹³ to explain the spontaneous, fluctuating processes that have maintained a life-sustaining atmospheric balance since long before the emergence of humans. His original work suggested that life processes on earth, with the oceans and atmosphere functioning as the regulatory mechanism, maintain the conditions that are conducive to life. More holistically, Lovelock expanded his theory to include the entire earth—organisms and the physical environment—as an integrated, self-regulating system.¹⁴ “Gaia,” a concept he later referred to as “geophysiology,” can be seen as a complex, self-regulating system, able to respond to changes in external conditions (e.g., an increase in the output of energy from the sun) so as to preserve environmental stability.¹⁵ Lovelock’s thesis finds support in the 18th century work of James Hutton, regarded by many as the father of the study of geology, who characterized the earth as a “superorganism,” with geologic circulatory systems analogous to those found in biological systems.¹⁶ A similar analogy was later voiced by T.H. Huxley,¹⁷as well as more recently, by Guy Murchie,¹⁸ and Lewis Thomas.¹⁹If our planet can be thought of as a self-organizing, self-regulating system—a holographic system, if you will—might not a similar view of human society offer us a more effective way of addressing the uncertainties and complexities of life?

Let us not forget that, because of entropy, nature has always been a hard and uncertain place; that most of the species that have ever lived on this planet became extinct long before mankind’s arrival; that life sustains itself only by feeding on other life, only by converting natural resources to the use of the actor; that the rest of nature produces forest fires, pollution, poisoned rivers, earthquakes and continental drift, deadly tornadoes and hurricanes, tsunamis, and soil erosion without the help of human beings; that the universe itself probably came into being as the result of a fiery explosion and may very well end in a cosmic gridlock that physicists call the “big crunch”; and, finally, that life as we know it today was able to emerge only because of the most catastrophic act of pollution in earth’s history, namely, the appearance some two billion years ago of oxygen in the atmosphere, which poisoned all anaerobic life forms and made way for the rest of “us.”²⁰ And in our quest to save “endangered species,” let us also remember that it was the extinction of the dinosaurs, perhaps brought about by a comet- or asteroid-caused atmospheric pollution that made way for the proliferation of “us” mammals.²¹ Nature is quite orderly, although its patterns of regularity proceed from no apparent agenda, and are not always beneficial to existing interests.

Those who wish to employ their own energies and resources to do something to preserve natural resources, rather than just holding press conferences to condemn developers, lumber companies, or petroleum companies, or to call upon the state to create yet another intrusive bureaucracy, have every opportunity to do so. In fact, many have discovered the increased effectiveness of themselves employing, rather than violating, property principles to accomplish their purposes. Environmental groups have spent many millions of dollars in courts, legislative halls, government agencies, and the media, fighting lumber companies over the fate of the redwoods. How many acres of such timberland might have been purchased and preserved, through private ownership, with this same amount of money? How much greater feelings of closeness to nature, rather than just a coziness with politicians, lobbyists, lawyers, and bureaucrats, might have been fostered by people devoting their resources directly to the private purchase of forests, marshlands, and coastlines, rather than political influence? What genuine sense of empowerment might have been experienced by those who could have exercised control over such lands as owners, rather than interlopers? How much social conflict, including depriving farmers of opportunities to profitably till their own soils, or causing severe injuries to lumbermen by the tactics of some violent environmental groups, could have been avoided by treating their fellow humans—who are also a part of nature—with the same respect that other animals accord the ownership claims of members of their species? As indicated earlier, that a number of organizations have recently been using private money to fund agreements with property owners shows how a change in perspective can achieve mutually desired ends without resorting to violence.

Bearing in mind that the production of entropy is an inevitable part of the life process, might adherence to the property principle provide insight into how to reduce the dumping of entropic wastes into the atmosphere, waterways, and the lands of others? To what extent have industries and governments contributed to these conditions by failing to internalize the costs of disposing of the unwanted byproducts of their activities? Are the environmental problems we experience anything more than an unintended consequence of our refusal to respect the inviolability of one another’s property boundaries; of our failure to live responsibly by incurring all of the costs of our actions? Can we transcend the divisive mindset that allows us to see others, and their property, as resources to be plundered in the leastcostly manner possible?

If we were to view life from a holographic perspective, we might understand that we are more than just “mankind”: we are “life” itself. We might then experience our interconnectedness with all of nature. Becoming aware of how the survival of a particular species depends upon the resiliency that comes from the capacity for change and variation, we can then understand how these same conditions are essential to the survival of the life system on earth. Life itself—not just human life—thrives best in an environment in which variation and mutability provide it an extended range of options with which to respond to changed circumstances. Just as nature did not settle upon the dinosaur as some ultimate expression of life processes, despite it having enjoyed many millions more years of planet-dominating success than we humans have thus far managed, mankind may not prove itself capable of sustaining its need for resiliency and change. Should this be the case, the life system may have to turn to alternative expressions of its expansive needs. Perhaps the dolphins will replace us as the repository for nature’s experiment with advanced intelligence. Mankind may not need a proliferation of other mammals, birds, or plants in order to survive, but life, itself, may require a wide range of species in order to maximize its opportunities for flexibility in its continuing experiment on this planet. At the same time, however, while the life system has advanced to highly complex forms of expression, it has kept its options open: nature has not given up on single celled forms. Should the more specialized species prove unable to respond to changed conditions, they may—like the dinosaurs and civilizations—find themselves swept aside, with life continuing its experimentation in either simpler or more complex forms.

There is a trait shared by many environmentalists and animal-rights advocates that I find troublesome. In the name of respecting and protecting “nature,” many tend to keep human beings—a significant part of nature—out of the equation of interests to be considered worthy of attention. A popular motion picture theme has involved humans endeavoring to liberate animals from various confinements or life-threatening situations. Such films as Born Free, Turtle Diary, Free Willy, and Fly Away Home, have permitted us to experience, albeit vicariously, a strong emotional sense of closeness to other living things as they struggle to pursue their unrestrained nature. But as I listen to the uplifting music and lyrics from Born Free, I cannot help but wonder why these same sentiments and insights rarely find expression in films about the repression of human beings. If a story about people liberating turtles from a zoo is so emotionally compelling, what about a film involving the liberation of children from those zoos we call government schools? To those concerned with the fate of dolphins trapped in tuna nets I would ask: what about the condition of human beings whose lives are caught up in the restraints of government regulations? If it is important for other species to enjoy the liberty and spontaneity that represents the very essence of “life,” why are human beings not accorded the same considerations? Are we so fearful of confronting the anti-life implications of our institutionalized thinking and attachments that we can do little more than transfer to other animals our needs for autonomy, spirituality, spontaneity, and respect? Science fiction writers, Montesquieu, and such utopian and dystopian novelists as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Samuel Butler, and Jonathan Swift, have created fictionalized societies for their writings as a way of deflecting attention from their own societies, thus masking a criticism they chose not to make directly. Are we so unwilling to openly examine what we are doing to ourselves? And, if so, why?

It seems clear that a change in our perspective could and perhaps will contribute to peaceful social change. In order to illustrate the “butterfly effect” of such a change, I would like to relate an experience I had, a number of years ago, with one of my students. This young woman is a fervent champion of the “rights” of animals, and she once told me that her principal reason in attending law school was to become a competent lawyer who could represent the interests of animals. She even seemed to have some clear idea of what their interests were! In one of our many discussions, I asked her about the wisdom of using political methods to accomplish the changes that she desired. “If individuals effected a change of consciousness so as to become more sensitive to the suffering of animals,” I inquired, “would legislation serve any valid purpose?”

“Of course not,” she responded.

“And if people did not experience such attitude changes,” I went on, “would legislation cause them to do so?”

“Probably not,” she admitted.

“And so, if people who do not share your sentiments become legally obliged to stop doing what they want to do, and to act as you want them to act, are they not likely to feel resentment and conflict?” I asked.

“Probably,” she acknowledged, “but what else can we do?”

“Have you considered peaceful alternatives that do not rely on political enforcement that only creates more conflict?” I replied.

“But that might take a long time,” she went on.

“Do you know how long it takes to get one single case through the courts, or to get a piece of legislation enacted? And this says nothing about the monetary costs of doing so,” I answered.

“But the approach you’re suggesting assumes that other people will change,” she said.

“Were you always a vegetarian and animal rights advocate?” I asked. This young woman acknowledged that she had not been, and went on to relate how her conversion came about when, in high school, she had had a conversation with a friend on the subject of eating meat.

“Did this friend try to force or intimidate you to become a vegetarian?” I inquired. She answered in the negative, adding that her friend was not even a vegetarian himself, but had only been challenging her thinking with questions.

“And so, what caused you to change?” I asked.

“I simply became aware of how we were making animals suffer, and I couldn’t be a part of that anymore,” she responded.

“Do you think that other people might also be capable of experiencing such an awareness?” I queried. “Furthermore,” I continued, “do you think that you—as an animal rights proponent—might be at least as effective in helping others to understand this, as your high school friend, who was not a vegetarian, was in helping you to become aware?”

My student had no immediate response to this. During the remainder of our conversation that day I asked her whether she thought it might be possible for her to devise methods of protecting animals that would not put her in a position of conflict with those who did not share her sentiments. She said she would think about it. In fact, as she later told me, for the next few weeks she went through a good deal of self-questioning about whether it even made sense for her to remain in law school. I didn’t see much of her during this time period, but then, one day, she stopped by my office with the brightest smile in her eyes. “Did you read the article about the seal hunters who gave up hunting, and now use their ships to take people on Arctic tours to observe seals, whales, and the like?” she asked.

What a lovely example of how a change in perspective, a rephrasing of the question, can make us more sensitive to the consideration of alternative solutions to what we perceive as problems. This is the only way in which any meaningful social change can ever take place; it will either arise within each individual, or it will not occur at all. It will either manifest itself through the commitments men and women make with their own lives and property, or it will only amount to political posturing, empty rhetoric, and the proliferation of conflict with others. Those who insist upon change coming from above, as something to be imposed upon mankind by institutional authorities, have given up on people. They have lost their confidence in the life processes that exhibit themselves only within individuals. We have tried gods, institutions, laws, rulers, and ideologies, in a futile attempt to establish order in society by the assumption of power over the lives and property of other persons. It is now time to give people a chance to bring order to the world by bringing themselves to order. Let us begin with ourselves. If it is truly our purpose to help lead others toward a greater respect for nature, then let us lead by our example of learning to respect nature as it manifests in the lives of our neighbors.