Privilege Cliques Vs Rich Commons

(I was about to write this as an FB post, but decided to ‘hide’ it deeper, and make it more permanent, so a post here)

People have been responding to the crazy crises that Covid throws up everyday in various ways.

I’m now starting to see various networks, including corporate and alumni efforts now to share our privilege and create a larger privilege pool for ‘members’ to dip into, not try and fix it so that nobody needs privilege.

I was reminded of the “private sufficiency, public riches” approach that I’d read about and that we sorely miss in most problem solving.

Our idea of solutioning, governance and emergency response is cliques of shared and loaned privilege in return for loyalty and affiliation. Tragedy of the commons, only more amplified.

We do this at various levels. It’s almost a default, built in response created through years of training and observation of society around us. And then we blame politicians for doing the same.

[7:42 AM, 5/1/2021] <a friend> : The tactical effort will always be around self protection..to make it work for everyone is a tough problem and requires long, selfless and sustained effort. Alumni organization are to benefit the alumni and not the society and they are doing that.

[7:46 AM, 5/1/2021] Sameer: Yes, and we all use whatever we can in crunch mode

[7:47 AM, 5/1/2021] Sameer: But as we organise must give up on the instincts that create the tragedy of the commons.

[7:47 AM, 5/1/2021] Sameer: And create abundance so the privilege is needed lesser by all.

[7:48 AM, 5/1/2021] Sameer: “IIT IIM covid response”, I saw! “Best brains” adding to the tragedy of the commons.

[7:59 AM, 5/1/2021] <the friend>: It is a tough problem and requires social change.

[7:59 AM, 5/1/2021] Sameer: Yeah

In another conversation, another friend noted (rightly) that it would wear us down since we’re not designed to handle problems at this scale. It’s just terrible then that we’ve merely acquired capabilities to create wilful, wanton destruction at the the scale that we cannot actually deal with outside of the tragedy of the commons oriented behaviour.

How do we retrain ourselves to, at least beyond the realm of the individual reaction (which is partly biological), respond differently to crises such that we do not add to the tragedy of the commons?

Or are we fated to do more of this, forever, by and large?

If so, I pray for our extinction. It’ll be merciful to much else on the planet.