"Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing, but the inexorable succession of generations requires that the basis for this knowledge be constantly refreshed"
About this Quote
Hardin points to a stubborn mismatch between human instincts and long-term collective well-being. Left to impulse and short-term self-interest, people tend to overuse shared resources, ignore diffuse harms, and rationalize free-riding. Education can bend those impulses toward foresight and restraint, teaching why individual choices have cumulative effects and how norms, laws, and cooperative strategies protect the commons that sustain us.
The line comes from the same intellectual terrain as his famous argument about the tragedy of the commons. There, behavior that is individually rational can be collectively ruinous unless guided by shared rules and a moral framework. Education is not mere information transfer; it is cultivation of judgment. It equips citizens to see invisible linkages: how carbon emissions aggregate, how antibiotic overuse breeds resistance, how misinformation corrodes trust. It also explains the legitimacy of constraints, so that limits are experienced not as arbitrary impositions but as collectively chosen safeguards.
The warning about the inexorable succession of generations adds urgency. Social memory is fragile. The reasons behind safety norms, environmental protections, or public health practices fade as the crises that inspired them recede. Each new cohort must be brought into the reasoning, not just the rituals. Otherwise the knowledge ossifies into habit without understanding and then evaporates. To preserve hard-won gains, the basis for the knowledge has to be renewed through explanation, practice, and institutional reinforcement.
Hardin also implies that education is a continuous process for everyone, because conditions and technologies change. New commons emerge in cyberspace, data, and the atmosphere; new temptations and externalities appear with them. A living civic culture updates its curriculum, incentives, and rules to match reality. Stewardship is a relay, not a monument. The handoff is education that keeps the why alive as well as the what.
The line comes from the same intellectual terrain as his famous argument about the tragedy of the commons. There, behavior that is individually rational can be collectively ruinous unless guided by shared rules and a moral framework. Education is not mere information transfer; it is cultivation of judgment. It equips citizens to see invisible linkages: how carbon emissions aggregate, how antibiotic overuse breeds resistance, how misinformation corrodes trust. It also explains the legitimacy of constraints, so that limits are experienced not as arbitrary impositions but as collectively chosen safeguards.
The warning about the inexorable succession of generations adds urgency. Social memory is fragile. The reasons behind safety norms, environmental protections, or public health practices fade as the crises that inspired them recede. Each new cohort must be brought into the reasoning, not just the rituals. Otherwise the knowledge ossifies into habit without understanding and then evaporates. To preserve hard-won gains, the basis for the knowledge has to be renewed through explanation, practice, and institutional reinforcement.
Hardin also implies that education is a continuous process for everyone, because conditions and technologies change. New commons emerge in cyberspace, data, and the atmosphere; new temptations and externalities appear with them. A living civic culture updates its curriculum, incentives, and rules to match reality. Stewardship is a relay, not a monument. The handoff is education that keeps the why alive as well as the what.
Quote Details
| Topic | Knowledge |
|---|
More Quotes by Garrett
Add to List
