The Fable of the Bees

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The title page of the 1714 edition of Mandeville's Fable of the Bees

The Fable of The Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits (1714) is a book by the Anglo-Dutch social philosopher Bernard Mandeville. It consists of the satirical poem The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves turn'd Honest, which was first published anonymously in 1705; a prose discussion of the poem, called "Remarks"; and an essay, An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue. In 1723 a second edition was published with two new essays.

In The Grumbling Hive, Mandeville describes a bee community that thrives until the bees decide to live by honesty and virtue. As they abandon their desire for personal gain, the economy of their hive collapses, and they go on to live simple, "virtuous" lives in a hollow tree. Mandeville's implication—that private vices create social benefits—caused a scandal when public attention turned to the work, especially after its 1723 edition.

Mandeville's social theory and the thesis of the book, according to E. J. Hundert, is that "contemporary society is an aggregation of self-interested individuals necessarily bound to one another neither by their shared civic commitments nor their moral rectitude, but, paradoxically, by the tenuous bonds of envy, competition and exploitation". Mandeville implied that people were hypocrites for espousing rigorous ideas about virtue and vice while they failed to act according to those beliefs in their private lives. He observed that those preaching against vice had no qualms about benefiting from it in the form of their society's overall wealth, which Mandeville saw as the cumulative result of individual vices (such as luxury, gambling, and crime, which benefited lawyers and the justice system).

Mandeville's challenge to the popular idea of virtue—in which only unselfish, Christian behaviour was virtuous—caused a controversy that lasted through the eighteenth century and influenced thinkers in moral philosophy and economics. The Fable influenced ideas about the division of labour and the free market (laissez-faire), and the philosophy of utilitarianism was advanced as Mandeville's critics, in defending their views of virtue, also altered them. His work influenced Scottish Enlightenment thinkers such as Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith.

Publication history

The genesis of The Fable of the Bees was Mandeville's anonymous publication of the poem The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves Turn'd Honest on 2 April 1705 as a sixpenny quarto, which was also pirated at a half-penny. In 1714, the poem was included in The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits, also published anonymously. This book included a commentary, An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue, and twenty "Remarks". The second edition in 1723 sold at five shillings and included two new parts: An Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools and A Search into the Nature of Society. This edition attracted the most interest and notoriety. Beginning with the 1724 edition Mandeville included a "Vindication", first published in the London Journal, as a response to his critics. Between 1724 and 1732, further editions were published, with changes limited to matters of style, slight alterations of wording, and a few new pages of preface. During this period, Mandeville worked on a "Part II", which consisted of six dialogs and was published in 1729 as The Fable of the Bees. Part II. By the Author of the First.

A French translation was published in 1740. The translation, by the Swiss J. Bertrand, was not particularly faithful to the original; according to Kaye, it was "a free one, in which the Rabelaisian element in Mandeville was toned down". By this time, French literati were familiar with Mandeville from the 1722 translation by Justus van Effen of his Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church and National Happiness. They had also followed the Fable's scandal in England. The book was especially popular in France between 1740 and 1770. It influenced Jean-François Melon and Voltaire, who had been exposed to the work in England between 1726 and 1729 and reflected on some of its ideas in his 1736 poem Le Mondain. A German translation first appeared in 1761.

F. B. Kaye's 1924 edition, based on his Yale dissertation and published by Oxford University's Clarendon Press, included extensive commentary and textual criticism. It renewed interest in the Fable, whose popularity had faded through the 19th century. Kaye's edition, a "model of what a fully annotated edition ought to be" and still important to Mandeville studies, was reprinted in 1988 by the American Liberty Fund.

Synopsis

Poem

The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves turn'd Honest (1705) is in doggerel couplets of eight syllables over 433 lines. It was a commentary on contemporary English society as Mandeville saw it. Economist John Maynard Keynes described the poem as setting forth "the appalling plight of a prosperous community in which all the citizens suddenly take it into their heads to abandon luxurious living, and the State to cut down armaments, in the interests of Saving". It begins:

A Spacious Hive well stock'd with Bees,

That lived in Luxury and Ease;

And yet as fam'd for Laws and Arms,

As yielding large and early Swarms;

Was counted the great Nursery        5

Of Sciences and Industry.

No Bees had better Government,

More Fickleness, or less Content.

They were not Slaves to Tyranny,

Nor ruled by wild Democracy;        10

But Kings, that could not wrong, because

Their Power was circumscrib'd by Laws.

The "hive" is corrupt but prosperous, yet it grumbles about lack of virtue. A higher power decides to give them what they ask for:

But Jove, with Indignation moved,

At last in Anger swore, he'd rid       230

The bawling Hive of Fraud, and did.

The very Moment it departs,

And Honesty fills all their Hearts;

This results in a rapid loss of prosperity, though the newly virtuous hive does not mind:

For many Thousand Bees were lost.

Hard'ned with Toils, and Exercise

They counted Ease it self a Vice;

Which so improved their Temperance;    405

That, to avoid Extravagance,

They flew into a hollow Tree,

Blest with Content and Honesty.

The poem ends in a famous phrase:

Bare Virtue can't make Nations live

In Splendor; they, that would revive

A Golden Age, must be as free,

For Acorns, as for Honesty.

Charity schools

In the 1723 edition, Mandeville added An Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools. He criticised charity schools, which were designed to educate the poor and, in doing so, instil virtue in them. Mandeville disagreed with the idea that education encourages virtue because he did not believe that evil desires existed only in the poor; rather he saw the educated and wealthy as much more crafty. Mandeville believed that educating the poor increased their desires for material things, defeating the purpose of the school and making it more difficult to provide for them.

Contemporary reception

At the time, the book was considered scandalous, being understood as an attack on Christian virtues. The 1723 edition gained a notoriety that previous editions had not, and caused debate among men of letters throughout the eighteenth century. The popularity of the second edition in 1723 in particular has been attributed to the collapse of the South Sea Bubble a few years earlier. For those investors who had lost money in the collapse and related fraud, Mandeville's pronouncements about private vice leading to public benefit would have been infuriating.

The book was vigorously combatted by, among others, the philosopher George Berkeley and the priest William Law. Berkeley attacked it in the second dialogue of his Alciphron (1732). The 1723 edition was presented as a nuisance by the Grand Jury of Middlesex, who proclaimed that the purpose of the Fable was to "run down Religion and Virtue as prejudicial to Society, and detrimental to the State; and to recommend Luxury, Avarice, Pride, and all vices, as being necessary to Public Welfare, and not tending to the Destruction of the Constitution". In the rhetoric of the presentment, Mandeville saw the influence of the Society for the Reformation of Manners. The book was also denounced in the London Journal.

Other writers attacked the Fable, notably Archibald Campbell (1691–1756) in his Aretelogia. Francis Hutcheson also denounced Mandeville, initially declaring the Fable to be "unanswerable"―that is, too absurd for comment. Hutcheson argued that pleasure consisted in "affection to fellow creatures", and not the hedonistic pursuit of bodily pleasures. He also disagreed with Mandeville's notion of luxury, which he believed depended on too austere a notion of virtue. The modern economist John Maynard Keynes noted that "only one man is recorded as having spoken a good word for it, namely Dr. Johnson, who declared that it did not puzzle him, but 'opened his eyes into real life very much'."

The book reached Denmark by 1748, where a major Scandinavian writer of the period, Ludvig Holberg (1684–1754), offered a new critique of the Fable—one that did not centre on "ethical considerations or Christian dogma". Instead, Holberg questioned Mandeville's assumptions about the constitution of a good or flourishing society: "the question is whether or not a society can be called luxurious in which citizens amass great wealth which is theirs to use while others live in the deepest poverty. Such is the general condition in all the so-called flourishing cities which are reputed to be the crown jewels of the earth." Holberg rejected Mandeville's ideas about human nature—that such unequal states are inevitable because humans have an animal-like or corrupt nature—by offering the example of Sparta, the Ancient Greek city-state. The people of Sparta were said to have rigorous, immaterialistic ideals, and Holberg wrote that Sparta was strong because of this system of virtue: "She was free from internal unrest because there was no material wealth to give rise to quarrels. She was respected and honored for her impartiality and justice. She achieved dominion over the other Greeks simply because she rejected dominion."

Jean-Jacques Rousseau commented on the Fable in his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (1754):

Mandeville sensed very well that even with all their morality men would never have been anything but monsters if nature had not given them pity in support of reason; but he did not see that from this quality alone flow all the social virtues he wants to question in men. In fact, what are generosity, clemency, humanity, if not pity applied to the weak, to the guilty, to the human species in general?

In the 19th century, Leslie Stephen, writing for the Dictionary of National Biography reported that "Mandeville gave great offense by this book, in which a cynical system of morality was made attractive by ingenious paradoxes. ... His doctrine that prosperity was increased by expenditure rather than by saving fell in with many current economic fallacies not yet extinct. Assuming with the ascetics that human desires were essentially evil and therefore produced 'private vices' and assuming with the common view that wealth was a 'public benefit', he easily showed that all civilization implied the development of vicious propensities.

Analysis

As a satire, the poem and commentary point out the hypocrisy of men who promulgate ideas about virtue while their private acts are vices. The degree to which Mandeville's "rigoristic" definitions of virtue and vice followed those of English society as a whole has been debated by scholars. Kaye suggests that two related concepts of vice are at play in Mandeville's formulation. Christianity taught that a virtuous act was unselfish, and the philosophy of Deism suggested that the use of reason was virtuous because it would naturally reveal theological truth. Mandeville looked for acts of public virtue and could not find them, yet observed that some actions (which must then be vices) led to beneficial outcomes in society, such as a prosperous state. This was Mandeville's paradox, as embedded in the book's subtitle: "Private Vices, Publick Benefits".

Mandeville was interested in human nature, and his conclusions about it were extreme and scandalous to 18th-century Europeans. He saw humans and animals as fundamentally the same: in a state of nature, both behave according to their passions or basic desires. Man was different, though, in that he could learn to see himself through others' eyes, and thus modify his behaviour if there were a social reward for doing so. In this light Mandeville wrote of the method by which the selfish instincts of "savage man" had been subdued by the political organization of society. It was in the interest of those who had selfish motives, he argued, to preach virtuous behavior to others:

It being the Interest then of the very worst of them, more than any, to preach up Publick-spiritedness, that they might reap the Fruits of the Labour and Self-denial of others, and at the same time indulge their own Appetites with less disturbance, they agreed with the rest, to call every thing, which, without Regard to the Publick, Man should commit to gratify any of his Appetites, VICE; if in that Action there cou'd be observed the least prospect, that it might either be injurious to any of the Society, or ever render himself less serviceable to others: And to give the Name of VIRTUE to every Performance, by which Man, contrary to the impulse of Nature, should endeavour the Benefit of others, or the Conquest of his own Passions out of a Rational Ambition of being good.

To critics it appeared that Mandeville was promoting vice, but this was not his intention. He said that he wanted to "pull off the disguises of artful men" and expose "the hidden strings" that guided human behaviour. Nevertheless he was seen as a "modern defender of licentiousness", and talk of "private vices" and "public benefits" was common among the educated public in England.

As literature

Less attention has been paid to the literary qualities of Mandeville's book than to his argument. Kaye called the book "possessed of such extraordinary literary merit" but focused his commentary on its implications for moral philosophy, economics, and utilitarianism. Harry L. Jones wrote in 1960 that the Fable "is a work having little or no merit as literature; it is a doggerel, pure and simple, and it deserves no discussion of those aspects of form by which art can be classified as art".

Economic views

Mandeville is today generally regarded as a serious economist and philosopher. His second volume of The Fable of the Bees in 1729 was a set of six dialogs that elaborated on his socio-economic views. His ideas about the division of labor draw on those of William Petty, and are similar to those of Adam Smith. Mandeville says:

When once Men come to be govern’d by written Laws, all the rest comes on a-pace. Now Property, and Safety of Life and Limb, may be secured: This naturally will forward the Love of Peace, and make it spread. No number of Men, when once they enjoy Quiet, and no Man needs to fear his Neighbour, will be long without learning to divide and subdivide their Labour...

Man, as I have hinted before, naturally loves to imitate what he sees others do, which is the reason that savage People all do the same thing: This hinders them from meliorating their Condition, though they are always wishing for it: But if one will wholly apply himself to the making of Bows and Arrows, whilst another provides Food, a third builds Huts, a fourth makes Garments, and a fifth Utensils, they not only become useful to one another, but the Callings and Employments themselves will in the same Number of Years receive much greater Improvements, than if all had been promiscuously follow’d by every one of the Five...

The truth of what you say is in nothing so conspicuous, as it is in Watch-making, which is come to a higher degree of Perfection, than it would have been arrived at yet, if the whole had always remain'd the Employment of one Person; and I am persuaded, that even the Plenty we have of Clocks and Watches, as well as the Exactness and Beauty they may be made of, are chiefly owing to the Division that has been made of that Art into many Branches.

The poem suggests many key principles of economic thought, including division of labor and the "invisible hand", seventy years before these concepts were more thoroughly elucidated by Adam Smith. Two centuries later, John Maynard Keynes cited Mandeville to show that it was "no new thing ... to ascribe the evils of unemployment to ... the insufficiency of the propensity to consume", a condition also known as the paradox of thrift, which was central to his own theory of effective demand.

The Seven Sins of Memory

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Sins_of_Memory

The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers

Author	Daniel L. Schacter
Published	2001
Publisher	Houghton Mifflin
ISBN	0618040196

The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers is a book (ISBN 0-618-21919-6) by Daniel Schacter, former chair of Harvard University's Psychology Department and a leading memory researcher.

The book revolves around the theory that "the seven sins of memory" are similar to the Seven deadly sins, and that if one tries to avoid committing these sins, it will help to improve one's ability to remember. Schacter argues that these features of human memory are not necessarily bad, and that they serve a useful purpose in memory. For instance, persistence is one of the sins of memory that can lead to things like post traumatic stress syndrome. However persistence is also necessary for long-term memory, and so it is essential.

Overview

Schacter asserts that "memory's malfunctions can be divided into seven fundamental transgressions or 'sins'." These are transience, absent-mindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence. The first three are described as sins of omission, since the result is a failure to recall an idea, fact, or event. The other four sins (misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence) are sins of commission, meaning that there is a form of memory present, but it is not of the desired fidelity or the desired fact, event, or ideas.

Types of memory failure

Transience

Transience refers to the general deterioration of a specific memory over time. Much more can be remembered of recent events than those further in one's past. This is especially true with episodic memory, because every time an episodic memory is recalled, it is re-encoded within the hippocampus, altering the memory each time one recalls it. Transience is caused because of interference. There are two types of interference: proactive interference (old information inhibits the ability to remember new information), and retroactive interference (new information inhibits the ability to remember old information).

One of Schacter's examples  of transience is a study of how well undergraduates remembered how they found out about the O. J. Simpson trial verdict immediately after, 15 months, and 32 months later. After three years, fewer than 30 percent remembered accurately, and nearly half had major errors.

Absent-mindedness

This form of memory breakdown involves problems at the point where attention and memory interface. Common errors of this type include misplacing keys or eyeglasses, or forgetting appointments because at the time of encoding sufficient attention was not paid to what would later need to be recalled.

Blocking

Blocking is when the brain tries to retrieve or encode information, but another memory interferes with it. Blocking is a primary cause of Tip of the tongue phenomenon (a temporary inaccessibility of stored information).

Misattribution

Misattribution entails correct recollection of information with incorrect recollection of the source of that information. For example, a person who witnesses a murder after watching a television program may incorrectly blame the murder on someone he or she saw on the television program. This error has profound consequences in legal systems because of its unacknowledged prevalence and the confidence which is often placed in the person's ability to impart correctly information critical to suspect identification.

One example Schacter gives of eyewitness misattribution occurred in connection with the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Two days before, the bomber rented a van, but an employee there reported seeing two men renting it together. One description fit the actual bomber, but the other description was soon determined to be of one of a pair of men who also rented a van the next day, and were unconnected with bombing.

Schacter also describes how to create misattribution errors using the DRM procedure. Subjects are read a list of words like sharp, pin, sewing, and so on, but not the word needle. Later subjects are given a second list of words including the word *needle*, and are asked to pick out which words were on the first list. Most of the time, subjects confidently assert that *needle* was on the first list.

Suggestibility

Suggestibility is somewhat similar to misattribution, but with the inclusion of overt suggestion. It is the acceptance of a false suggestion made by others. Memories of the past are often influenced by the manner in which they are recalled, and when subtle emphasis is placed on certain aspects which might seem likely to a specific type of memory, those emphasized aspects are sometimes incorporated into the recollection, whether or not they occurred. For example, a person sees a crime being committed by a redheaded man. Subsequently, after reading in the newspaper that the crime was committed by a brown-haired man, the witness "remembers" a brown-haired man instead of a redheaded man.

Loftus and Palmer's work into leading questions is an example of such suggestibility.

Bias

The sin of bias is similar to the sin of suggestibility in that one's current feelings and worldview distort remembrance of past events. This can pertain to specific incidences and the general conception one has of a certain period in one's life. Memories encoded with a certain amount of stimulation and emotion are more easily recalled. Thus, a contented adult might look back with fondness on his or her childhood, induced to do so by positive memories from that time, which might not be representative of his/her average mood during his/her childhood.

Persistence

This failure of the memory system involves the unwanted recall of information that is disturbing. The remembrance can range from a blunder on the job to a truly traumatic experience, and the persistent recall can lead to formation of phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder, and even suicide in particularly disturbing or intrusive instances.

Seven penances

While attending a science conference in Orlando, Florida in 2004, Scott S. Haraburda heard the author present these seven sins to U.S. Army scientists and program managers. After conducting several experiments to validate Schacter's identification of these fundamental transgressions, Haraburda developed actions to help us improve our memories, which he termed "penances":

1. Obtain information quickly after an event, when it is fresh in people's minds.
2. Use a prioritized task list.
3. Take notes from important events, including meeting minutes.
4. Record important events and milestones daily.
5. Use neutrally worded questions when soliciting information.
6. Understand the basis or perspective of the person providing the information.
7. Understand and recognize the symptoms of PTS.

Hubris

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris 

 

Illustration for John Milton's Paradise Lost by Gustave Doré (1866). The spiritual descent of Lucifer into Satan - one of the most famous examples of hubris.

Hubris (/ˈhjuːbrɪs/, from ancient Greek ὕβρις) describes a personality quality of extreme or foolish pride or dangerous overconfidence, often in combination with (or synonymous with) arrogance. "Arrogance" comes from the Latin adrogare and it means feeling a right to demand certain attitudes and behaviors from other people, "pretension" which is also associated with it is not synonymous to hubris. According to studies, hubris, arrogance and pretension are related to the need for victory (even if it doesn't always mean winning) instead of reconciliation, such as "friendly" groups might promote. Hubris is usually perceived as a characteristic of an individual rather than a group, although the group the offender belongs to may suffer collateral consequences from wrongful acts. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence, accomplishments or capabilities. The adjectival form of the noun hubris is "hubristic".

The term hubris originated in ancient Greek, where it had several different meanings depending on the context: in legal usage it meant assault or sexual crimes and theft of public property, and in religious usage it meant transgression against a god.

Ancient Greek origin

Common use

In ancient Greek, hubris referred to “outrage”: actions that violated natural order, or which shamed and humiliated the victim, sometimes for the pleasure or gratification of the abuser. In some contexts, the term had a sexual connotation. Shame was frequently reflected upon the perpetrator, as well.

Legal usage

In legal terms, hubristic violations of the law included what might today be termed assault-and-battery, sexual crimes, or the theft of public or sacred property. Two well-known cases are found in the speeches of Demosthenes, a prominent statesman and orator in ancient Greece. These two examples occurred when first Midias punched Demosthenes in the face in the theatre (Against Midias), and second when (in Against Conon) a defendant allegedly assaulted a man and crowed over the victim. Yet another example of hubris appears in Aeschines' Against Timarchus, where the defendant, Timarchus, is accused of breaking the law of hubris by submitting himself to prostitution and anal intercourse. Aeschines brought this suit against Timarchus to bar him from the rights of political office and his case succeeded.

In ancient Athens, hubris was defined as the use of violence to shame the victim (this sense of hubris could also characterize rape). Aristotle defined hubris as shaming the victim, not because of anything that happened to the committer or might happen to the committer, but merely for that committer's own gratification:

to cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to you, nor because anything has happened to you, but merely for your own gratification. Hubris is not the requital of past injuries; this is revenge. As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: naive men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater.

Crucial to this definition are the ancient Greek concepts of honour (τιμή, timē) and shame (αἰδώς, aidōs). The concept of honour included not only the exaltation of the one receiving honour, but also the shaming of the one overcome by the act of hubris. This concept of honour is akin to a zero-sum game. Rush Rehm simplifies this definition of hubris to the contemporary concept of "insolence, contempt, and excessive violence".

Modern usage

In its modern usage, hubris denotes overconfident pride combined with arrogance. Hubris is often associated with a lack of humility. Sometimes a person's hubris is also associated with ignorance. The accusation of hubris often implies that suffering or punishment will follow, similar to the occasional pairing of hubris and nemesis in Greek mythology. The proverb "pride goeth (goes) before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall" (from the biblical Book of Proverbs, 16:18) is thought to sum up the modern use of hubris. Hubris is also referred to as "pride that blinds" because it often causes a committer of hubris to act in foolish ways that belie common sense. In other words, the modern definition may be thought of as, "that pride that goes just before the fall."

Examples of hubris often appear in literature, archetypically in Greek tragedy, and arguably most famously in John Milton's Paradise Lost, in which Lucifer attempts to compel the other angels to worship him, is cast into hell by God and the innocent angels, and proclaims: "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." Victor in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein manifests hubris in his attempt to become a great scientist; he creates life through technological means, but comes to regret his project. Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus portrays the eponymous character as a scholar whose arrogance and pride compel him to sign a deal with the Devil, and retain his haughtiness until his death and damnation, despite the fact that he could easily have repented had he chosen to do so.

General George Armstrong Custer furnished an historical example of hubris in the decisions that culminated in the 1876 Battle of Little Big Horn; he apocryphally exclaimed: "Where did all those damned Indians come from?"

Larry Wall famously promotes "the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris". [DJS -- agreed!]

Pride

C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity that pride is the "anti-God" state, the position in which the ego and the self are directly opposed to God: "Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind."

Arrogance

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "arrogance" in terms of "high or inflated opinion of one's own abilities, importance, etc., that gives rise to presumption or excessive self-confidence, or to a feeling or attitude of being superior to others [...]." Adrian Davies sees arrogance as more generic and less severe than hubris.

Religious usage

Ancient Greece

The Greek word for sin, hamartia (ἁμαρτία), originally meant "error" in the ancient dialect, and so poets like Hesiod and Aeschylus used the word "hubris" to describe transgressions against the gods. A common way that hubris was committed was when a mortal claimed to be better than a god in a particular skill or attribute. Claims like these were rarely left unpunished, and so Arachne, a talented young weaver, was transformed into a spider when she said that her skills exceeded those of the goddess Athena. Additional examples include Icarus, Phaethon, Salmoneus, Niobe, Cassiopeia, Tantalus, and Tereus.

These events were not limited to myth, and certain figures in history were considered to be have been punished for committing hubris through their arrogance. One such person was king Xerxes as portrayed in Aeschylus's play The Persians, and who allegedly threw chains to bind the Hellespont sea as punishment for daring to destroy his fleet.

What is common to all these examples is the breaching of limits, as the Greeks believed that the Fates (Μοῖραι) had assigned each being with a particular area of freedom, an area that even the gods could not breach.

The goddess Hybris has been described as having "insolent encroachment upon the rights of others".

Christianity

In the Old Testament, the "hubris is overweening pride, superciliousness or arrogance, often resulting in fatal retribution or nemesis". Proverbs 16:18 states: "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall".

The word hubris as used in the New Testament parallels the Hebrew word pasha, meaning "transgression". It represents a pride that "makes a man defy God", sometimes to the degree that he considers himself an equal. In contrast to this, the common word for "sin" was hamartia, which refers to an error and reflects the complexity of the human condition. Its result is guilt rather than direct punishment (as in the case of hubris).

Global environmental inequality

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_environmental_inequality 

 

Plastic pollution in Ghana

Global environmental inequality refers to "the expression of an environmental burden that would be borne primarily by disadvantaged and /or minority populations or by territories suffering from a certain poverty and exclusion of these inhabitants." Global environmental inequality is an issue that affects both developing and developed countries across the globe.

Environmental racism

President Barack Obama sips filtered water from Flint following a round table on the Flint water crisis at Northwestern High School

The relationship between environmental racism and environmental inequality is recognized throughout the developed and developing world. An example of global environmental racism is the process in which the locations of hazardous waste facilities are higher in vulnerable communities compared to that of other areas. This is most commonly seen in the USA as the environmental racism gap is very prevalent in many states across the country. Environmental racism raises ethical issues but can also have implications for a state's laws and constitution, for example the “clean air act”, “the fourteenth amendment” and the “civil rights act”.

An example of a case of environmental racism is a small mainly African American (90%) town called Uniontown located in Alabama where there is a toxic landfill which is believed to have caused serious health issues in the area. Concerns include things such as mental health issues, a one-in-five chance of developing cancer and deficiencies in reproduction due to the toxins such as mercury and arsenic contained within the ash. The toxic landfill is used to dump millions of tons of coal ash which comes from mainly white wealthier areas. Uniontown is not an isolated case as it can be seen there are many examples across the states such as Flint Michigan who are dealing with a major water crisis, West Dallas Texas where African American housing projects have been set up twenty paces from a battery recycling smelter, and Chester Pennsylvania which has become an attraction for toxic waste sites. In California the government also decided to allow pollution in vulnerable communities. The effect of environmental racism is seen in the health data which shows that African Americans are three times more likely to die from asthma. Three out of five African Americans live in a community with a least one toxic waste site. On average it takes twenty percent longer for toxic sites in minority community towns to be placed on the national priority list than white areas.

Environmental racism is not only seen in the developed world but it is also prevalent in the developing world. Much hazardous waste in Africa is not actually produced there but rather was exported by developed countries such as the U.S; even though much of this exportation of waste took place in the 1980s Africa is still left with the problem of toxic waste sites to this day.

Income inequality

Environmental Kuznets curve showing an increase in environmental damage during industrial development followed by a decrease.

The relationship between economic inequality and environmental inequality plays a large roll in understanding certain reasons that account for the cause of environmental inequality. The association between income inequality and environmental inequality can be measured by the environmental Kuznets curve. This curve states that when income per capita is high, the rate of pollution in that area rises until income reaches a certain threshold, once this threshold of wealth is passed then pollution in that area begins to decrease. In the case of developing nations an increase in pollution and production of greenhouse gases occurs as that nation undergoes economic growth, therefore for developing nations to escape poverty through growth pollution must be produced. This pollution is often caused through industry and manufacturing. Once the developing nation becomes a developed nation then we begin to see a drop off in pollution as a better alternative to high pollution industry can be found to stimulate the economy. Renewable energy has been more expensive to produce and maintain than traditional energy produced by fossil fuels and has only recently become as cost efficient as fossil fuels. Since the discovery of greener energy sources only richer developed nations have been able to invest and integrate renewable energy into their power production industries.

In countries such as Russia it has been found that in areas where income was higher that there was an increase in uncontrolled air pollution. However while income may have been higher in these regions a greater disparity in income inequality was found. It was discovered that "greater income inequality within a region is associated with more pollution, implying that it is not only the level of income that matters but also its distribution". In Russia areas lacking in hospital beds suffer from greater air pollution than areas with higher numbers of beds per capita which implies that the poor or inadequate distribution of public services also may add to the environmental inequality of that region.

Another consequence of income inequality's association with environmental inequality is the environmental privilege of consumers in developed countries, "consumers of goods and services that are produced by polluting industries [who] often are spatially and socially separated from the people who bear the impacts of the pollution". Those who are working in the production of consumer goods suffer a disproportionate amount the consequences of environmental deterioration that their more affluent consumer counterparts.

Inequality in the United States

In the United States it was also found that income inequality greatly affected the quality of the environment in which people live. People of colour and the poor in America on average experience much lower quality environments then white people or the wealthy. Action was taken in the early 1990s by the American Government in an attempt to improve environmental quality for poorer regions. In 1992 the United States Environmental Protection Agency set up the Office of Environmental Equity, now known as the Office of Environmental Justice, to address the situation at hand. However the Office of Environmental Justice's work was undermined by Congress who refused to pass the bills which were presented to them by the EPA. Instead states began to pass their own bills which did very little to improve environmental quality for poorer areas. As a result, there has been little to no change in the ratios of environmental inequality whereas there has been a decline in the ratios of race and poverty.

Environmental change in developing countries

Cattle in the River Ganges with pollution on the bank

Global environmental inequality is primarily seen in developing countries. In recent years we have seen a change in China's production industry in relation from the movement from the primary sector of production moving into the secondary sector. China's urbanization has caused a rise in the production of factories. In China factories create harmful waste such as nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide which cause health risk. Journalist and science writer Fred Pearce notes that in China "most monitoring of urban air still concentrates on one or at most two pollutants, sometimes particulates, sometimes nitrogen oxides or sulfur dioxides or ozone. Similarly, most medical studies of the impacts of these toxins look for links between single pollutants and suspected health effects such as respiratory disease and cardiovascular conditions." The country emits about a third of all the human-made sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and particulates that are poured into the air around the world. The Global Burden of Disease Study, an international collaboration, estimates that 1.1 million Chinese die from the effects of this air pollution each year, roughly a third of the global death toll." The economic cost of deaths due to air pollution is estimated at 267 billion yuan (US$38 billion) per year. 

Climate change and environmental inequality

The main issue faced by developed countries in the western world is climate change. Climate change and its effects are being escalated due to the actions of many developed countries. The use of fossil fuels has resulted in an increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide by 33% in the past 150 years. However, the effects of climate change will be worse in areas with less food security. Due to the changes in temperature and precipitation, combined with the increase in levels of greenhouse gases emitted, it is becoming more and more difficult to produce sustainable crops. This dangerous combination leads to constant fluctuating levels of trade.  The main causes of short-term fluctuations in food production are natural disasters, such as drought and floods. When climate fluctuations become more prevalent and widespread, extreme natural events will become more severe and more frequent. With the demand for food expected to increase by 50% by 2030 alongside a growing population, food security is becoming vital. In temperate latitudes, higher temperatures are expected to benefit agriculture, as the areas that are potentially suitable for cropping will expand, and the length of the growing period will also increase.

However, with the rise in temperature, comes a rise in extreme events, such as heatwaves which may lead to drought. For example, in the summer of 2018, Ireland experienced the hottest summer on record since 1976. This heatwave lead to a 53 day period of "absolute drought conditions", and as a result, there was an increase in crop failures.  The increase in frequency of these extreme events affect the stability of food supplies and thus food security. When food supplies get damaged by weather, access to food also becomes damaged. When developing countries are faced with extreme events, and certain crops can no longer be produced due to sustainability, the access to certain foods, such as cereals and exotic fruits, become unavailable to the people living in developed countries. The areas that will be mostly affected by crop failure are found in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia. This means that the regions that will be exposed to the highest degree of instability in food production are the poorest regions in developing countries.  Climate change will affect all dimensions of food security, in particular food availability, access to food, and stability of food supplies. The overall impact of climate change on food security will affect both developing countries and developed countries, however, the effects will be felt differently across regions and over different periods of time.

Ecological footprint

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint 

 

World map of countries by their raw ecological footprint, relative to the world average biocapacity (2007).

 

National ecological surplus or deficit, measured as a country's biocapacity per person (in global hectares) minus its ecological footprint per person (also in global hectares). Data from 2013.

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The ecological footprint is a method promoted by the Global Footprint Network to measure human demand on natural capital, i.e. the quantity of nature it takes to support people or an economy. It tracks this demand through an ecological accounting system. The accounts contrast the biologically productive area people use for their consumption to the biologically productive area available within a region or the world (biocapacity, the productive area that can regenerate what people demand from nature). In short, it is a measure of human impact on the environment.

Footprint and biocapacity can be compared at the individual, regional, national or global scale. Both footprint and biocapacity change every year with number of people, per person consumption, efficiency of production, and productivity of ecosystems. At a global scale, footprint assessments show how big humanity's demand is compared to what Earth can renew. Global Footprint Network estimates that, as of 2014, humanity has been using natural capital 1.7 times as fast as Earth can renew it, which they describe as meaning humanity's ecological footprint corresponds to 1.7 planet Earths.

Ecological footprint analysis is widely used around the world in support of sustainability assessments. It enables people to measure and manage the use of resources throughout the economy and explore the sustainability of individual lifestyles, goods and services, organizations, industry sectors, neighborhoods, cities, regions and nations.

Overview

The first academic publication about ecological footprints was by William Rees in 1992. The ecological footprint concept and calculation method was developed as the PhD dissertation of Mathis Wackernagel, under Rees' supervision at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, from 1990–1994. Originally, Wackernagel and Rees called the concept "appropriated carrying capacity". To make the idea more accessible, Rees came up with the term "ecological footprint", inspired by a computer technician who praised his new computer's "small footprint on the desk". In 1996, Wackernagel and Rees published the book Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth.

The simplest way to define ecological footprint is the amount of the environment necessary to produce the goods and services necessary to support a particular lifestyle.

The model is a means of comparing consumption and lifestyles, and checking this against biocapacity. The tool can inform policy by examining to what extent a nation uses more (or less) than is available within its territory, or to what extent the nation's lifestyle would be replicable worldwide. The footprint can also be a useful tool to educate people about overconsumption, with the aim of altering personal behavior. Ecological footprints may be used to argue that many current lifestyles are not sustainable. Such a global comparison also clearly shows the inequalities of resource use on this planet.

The GHG footprint or the more narrow carbon footprint are a component of the ecological footprint. Often, when only the carbon footprint is reported, it is expressed in weight of CO
2 (or CO2e representing GHG warming potential (GGWP)), but it can also be expressed in land areas like ecological footprints. Both can be applied to products, people or whole societies.

Methodology

The natural resources of Earth are finite, and unsustainable given current levels of use.

The focus of ecological footprint accounting is renewable resources. The total amount of such resources which the plant produces according to this model has been dubbed biocapacity. Ecological footprints can be calculated at any scale: for an activity, a person, a community, a city, a town, a region, a nation, or humanity as a whole. Footprint values are categorized for carbon, food, housing, goods and services. This approach can be applied to an activity such as the manufacturing of a product or driving of a car. This resource accounting is similar to life-cycle analysis wherein the consumption of energy, biomass (food, fiber), building material, water and other resources are converted into a normalized measure of land area called global hectares (gha).

Since 2003, Global Footprint Network has calculated the ecological footprint from UN data sources for the world as a whole and for over 200 nations (known as the National Footprint Accounts). The total footprint number of Earths needed to sustain the world's population at that level of consumption are also calculated. Every year the calculations are calibrated. The time series are recalculated with every update since UN statistics also change historical data sets. Lin et al. (2018) finds that the trends for countries and the world have stayed consistent despite data updates. Also, a recent study by the Swiss Ministry of Environment independently recalculated the Swiss trends and reproduced them within 1–4% for the time period that they studied (1996–2015). Since 2006, a first set of ecological footprint standards exist that detail both communication and calculation procedures. The latest version are the updated standards from 2009.

The ecological footprint accounting method at the national level is described on the website of Global Footprint Network or in greater detail in academic papers, including Borucke et al.

The National Accounts Review Committee has published a research agenda on how to improve the accounts.

Footprint measurements

Ecological footprints in 2018.

For 2014 Global Footprint Network estimated humanity's ecological footprint as 1.7 planet Earths. According to their calculations this means that humanity's demands were 1.7 times more than what the planet's ecosystems renewed.

In 2007, the average biologically productive area per person worldwide was approximately 1.8 global hectares (gha) per capita. The U.S. footprint per capita was 9.0 gha, and that of Switzerland was 5.6 gha, while China's was 1.8 gha. The WWF claims that the human footprint has exceeded the biocapacity (the available supply of natural resources) of the planet by 20%. Wackernagel and Rees originally estimated that the available biological capacity for the 6 billion people on Earth at that time was about 1.3 hectares per person, which is smaller than the 1.8 global hectares published for 2006, because the initial studies neither used global hectares nor included bioproductive marine areas.

Ecological Footprint per person and HDI of countries by world regions (2014) and its natural resource consumption

According to the 2018 edition of the National footprint accounts, humanity's total ecological footprint has exhibited an increasing trend since 1961, growing an average of 2.1% per year (SD= 1.9). Humanity's ecological footprint was 7.0 billion gha in 1961 and increased to 20.6 billion gha in 2014. The world-average ecological footprint in 2014 was 2.8 global hectares per person. The carbon footprint is the fastest growing part of the ecological footprint and accounts currently for about 60% of humanity's total ecological footprint.

The Earth's biocapacity has not increased at the same rate as the ecological footprint. The increase of biocapacity averaged at only 0.5% per year (SD = 0.7). Because of agricultural intensification, biocapacity was at 9.6 billion gha in 1961 and grew to 12.2 billion gha in 2016.

According to Wackernagel and his organisation, the Earth has been in "overshoot", where humanity is using more resources and generating waste at a pace that the ecosystem can't renew, since the 1970s. In 2018, Earth Overshoot Day, the date where humanity has used more from nature than the planet can renew in the entire year, was estimated to be August 1. Now more than 85% of humanity lives in countries that run an ecological deficit.

According to Rees, "the average world citizen has an eco-footprint of about 2.7 global average hectares while there are only 2.1 global hectare of bioproductive land and water per capita on earth. This means that humanity has already overshot global biocapacity by 30% and now lives unsustainabily by depleting stocks of 'natural capital'."

Footprint by country

Ecological footprint for different nations compared to their Human Development Index.

The world-average ecological footprint in 2013 was 2.8 global hectares per person. The average per country ranges from over 10 to under 1 global hectares per person. There is also a high variation within countries, based on individual lifestyle and economic possibilities.

The Western Australian government State of the Environment Report included an Ecological Footprint measure for the average Western Australian seven times the average footprint per person on the planet in 2007, a total of about 15 hectares.

Studies in the United Kingdom

The UK's average ecological footprint is 5.45 global hectares per capita (gha) with variations between regions ranging from 4.80 gha (Wales) to 5.56 gha (East England).

BedZED, a 96-home mixed-income housing development in South London, was designed by Bill Dunster Architects and sustainability consultants BioRegional for the Peabody Trust. Despite being populated by relatively average people, BedZED was found to have a footprint of 3.20 gha (not including visitors), due to on-site renewable energy production, energy-efficient architecture, and an extensive green lifestyles program that included London's first carsharing club. Findhorn Ecovillage, a rural intentional community in Moray, Scotland, had a total footprint of 2.56 gha, including both the many guests and visitors who travel to the community. However, the residents alone had a footprint of 2.71 gha, a little over half the UK national average and one of the lowest ecological footprints of any community measured so far in the industrialized world. Keveral Farm, an organic farming community in Cornwall, was found to have a footprint of 2.4 gha, though with substantial differences in footprints among community members.

Ecological footprint at the individual level

In a 2012 study of consumers acting 'green' vs. 'brown' (where green people are "expected to have significantly lower ecological impact than 'brown' consumers"), the conclusion was "the research found no significant difference between the carbon footprints of green and brown consumers". A 2013 study concluded the same.

Reviews and critiques

Early criticism was published by van den Bergh and Verbruggen in 1999, which was updated in 2014. Another criticism was published in 2008. A more complete review commissioned by the Directorate-General for the Environment (European Commission) was published in June 2008. The review found the concept unique and useful for assessing progress on the EU’s Resource Strategy, but that further improvements in data quality, methodologies and assumptions were needed.

A recent critique of the concept is due to Blomqvist et al. (2013) with a reply from Rees and Wackernagel (2013), and a rejoinder by Blomqvist et al. (2013)

An additional strand of critique is from Giampietro and Saltelli (2014), with a reply from Goldfinger et al., 2014, a rejoinder by Giampietro and Saltelli (2014),. A joint paper summarising the terms of the controversy was finally authored by the two involved teams in the journal Ecological indicators. Additional comments were offered by van den Bergh and Grazi (2015).

A number of countries have engaged in research collaborations to test the validity of the method. This includes Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, the United Arab Emirates and Belgium.

Grazi et al. (2007) have performed a systematic comparison of the ecological footprint method with spatial welfare analysis that includes environmental externalities, agglomeration effects and trade advantages. They find that the footprint method does not lead to maximum social welfare.

Newman (2006) has argued that the ecological footprint concept may have an anti-urban bias, as it does not consider the opportunities created by urban growth. Calculating the ecological footprint for densely populated areas, such as a city or small country with a comparatively large population — e.g. New York and Singapore respectively — may lead to the perception of these populations as "parasitic". This is because these communities have little intrinsic biocapacity, and instead must rely upon large hinterlands. Critics argue that this is a dubious characterization since farmers in developed nations may easily consume more resources than urban inhabitants, due to transportation requirements and the unavailability of economies of scale. Furthermore, such moral conclusions seem to be an argument for autarky. Some even take this train of thought a step further, claiming that the footprint denies the benefits of trade. Therefore such critics argue that the footprint can only be applied globally.

The method rewards the replacement of original ecosystems with high-productivity agricultural monocultures by assigning a higher biocapacity to such regions. For example, replacing ancient woodlands or tropical forests with monoculture forests or plantations may improve the ecological footprint. Similarly if organic farming yields were lower than those of conventional methods, this could result in the former being "penalized" with a larger ecological footprint. Complementary biodiversity indicators attempt to address this. The WWF's Living Planet Report combines the footprint calculations with the Living Planet Index of biodiversity. A modified ecological footprint that takes biodiversity into account has been created for use in Australia.