Easter Island Statues

Garrett Hardin wrote an essay titled “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor”. In this essay he spoke of the Earth being similar to a lifeboat in which it has limited capacity and resources. This is a fair assumption, as the Earth does have limited resources and carrying capacity. He mentions that we are “adrift in a moral sea” saying that in today’s world it is morally abhorrent to not help a person in need but that we should do what we have to in order to survive ourselves. Hardin mentions a “tragedy of the commons” he states that if a pasture were to become a commons it would only take one person to not show restraint to ruin the system and cause mass suffering. He uses the world’s air and water as an example claiming that they

I found this chapter absolutely fascinating. For me the real insights were the role of the political system in the building of the giant stone statues that became Easter Island’s biggest mystery when it was discovered in 1722. There were hundreds of erect statues with no one there. Who built them? As Diamond explains, it was the dozen clans that controlled the island who built them. “The clans competed peacefully by seeking to outdo each other in building

This increases the responsibility of the state for looking after its citizens as the poorer population of the country grows in numbers. Hardin demonstrates this in ‘Living on a Lifeboat’ by examining the rate of reproduction of the poor in comparison to the wealthy. According to Hardin, the population of the poorer classes doubles every thirty-five years, whilst the wealthier classes experience the same growth over a period of eighty-seven years. (Hardin, 1974) In a lifeboat situation, this reproduction rate would mean the poor would be heavily reliant on the income and supplies of the wealthy. Due to this Hardin states that the wealthy must assume that the poor will be self-interested and sharing our resources with them will only be harmful to our own survival. (Hardin, 1974) Why should the wealthy share if they get nothing from the poor in return? They deposit their supplies into a shared collective on the boat and the poor on-board take it without giving anything back. Hardin refers to this as the ‘tragedy of the commons’ and if taken into a real-life situation we are presented with the development of social benefits for the poor - a system in which the rich pay taxes in order for the poor to be financially supported through state benefits, social housing etc. (Hardin,

Situations where self interest and public interest work against each other are known as “commons problems.” In the market model the chief source of conflict is individual’s perceived welfare vs. another’s perceived welfare. In the polis model the chief source of conflict is self interest vs. public interest, or “how to have both private benefits and collective benefits.” Stone notes “most actions in the market model do not have social consequences” but in the polis, commons problems “are everything.” It is rare in the polis that the costs and benefits of an action are entirely self-contained, affect only one or two individuals, or are limited to direct and immediate effects. Actions in the polis have unanticipated consequences, side effects, long-term effects, and effect many people. Stone states, “one major dilemma in the polis is how to get people to give weight to these broader consequences in their private calculus of choices, especially in an era when the dominant culture celebrates private consumption and personal gain.” That is a

What is "the tragedy o the commons"? Explain how the concept might apply to an unregulated industry that is a source of water pollution?

Throughout history there have been many examples of tragedy of the commons. Tragedy of the commons is when people in a certain area over exploit a common resource which leads toa higher problem. Tragedy of the commons normally happens when people get greedy and get more than they really need. For example, if one farmer is public grazing area were to add a cow over the limit the field can sustain it won’t do much damage but if the other farmers also add another cow to the field it could end up harming it to the point where it is no longer usable.This comes to show that if even a single person becomes greedy it could ruin so many things for other people. Ideas will be pulled out from Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons” to be used in this essay.

Similarities and differences are what make things so interesting. Would you be happy if everyone was the same. Every looked the same, and liked the same things and hated the same things. No you wouldn’t because you would want to be you and no one can tell you what you want to be or what you don’t want to be. Even the buildings you make would be the same from a normal house to a normal office building. The “Panama Canal” was one of the most useful canals ever built and they were made to for one reason and that was to transport goods. This was somethings everyone needed to solve at that time(1900s). The great Moai statues of Easter Island are also great structures and are really tremendous to the eye. These buildings and canals were made to one purpose they had to do somethings and that something was to make things easier for the people. Some similarities they had were that they both took a long time and sacrifice to build. A difference they had was that they were built for different purposes and they had their own different struggles.

The tragedy of the commons is a pretty basic concept. So essentially, this theory states that people will use a shared resource to their own self-interests and ultimately “consume” the resource until its value is diminished (Brander, 2014).

“Tragedy of the Commons” means is a situation within a shared-resource structure where people act by themself without thinking about the common good used by others by depleting that resource through their action because of their own selfish gain.

Societies have risen, prospered, and fallen from the beginning of human existence through the present day. Something we may ask ourselves is what seeds in society lead to its peaceful prosperity and what seeds in society lead to its destructive collapse? While it may seem daunting or overwhelming to dissect the success or collapse of a multi-faceted society, there are lenses and tools through which we are able to do so, such as political theory and speculative dystopian fiction. By using lenses to analyze the society in which we live, we are able to recognize seeds of both prosperity and destruction in our society that may otherwise be overlooked or ignored. The speculative dystopian fiction of Octavia Butler may be considered as building upon the political theory of the tragedy of the commons. Butler provides her American audience an analysis of the root causes of a commons’ collapse, as well as some possible solutions to preventing its collapse in order to warn her readers against ignoring current trends in our society which could lead to our tragedy of the commons.

Stonehenge and Easter Island are two very old and interesting mysteries and monuments of the world. Stonehenge is outside of Salisbury, England and is consists of lots of grass and giant, grey stones. This site was made between the times of 1520 B.C.E- 3000 B.C.E. There are many reasons why people think Stonehenge was built. Stonehenge was built it using precise stages of construction. Archaeologists said it could have been used for rituals, traditions or even used as a burial site. Easter Island, itself is off the coast of Chile. The Easter Island statues or Moai as called on the Island are big black rocks with long slim faces. The statues seemed to have been used in many different ways such as rituals, worshipping and traditions. While the Easter Island statues were used for worshipping and were carved and then moved, Stonehenge may have been used as a burial site or for ritualistic traditions and was made in different stages in one place.

Easter Island was based off of religious perspective of life. Rapa Nui, as Polynesians called the island, settled during the fifth century by migrants from Marquesas. The people who lived on the island were unaware of the damage they were doing to the island. In Wrights’s “Fools Paradise” he states, “not all past civilizations fell because of plague or conquest; many collapsed internally, victims of their own success” (Wright119). This shows that the aftermath of the destruction was not caused by natural causes; the island suffered because of mankind. There is truth to his statement because of progressive problems that are occurring today.

2,300 miles from Chile’s west coast and 2,500 miles south of Tahiti lies one of archaeologies most famous sites: Rapa Nui. Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island covers approximately 64 square miles in the South Pacific Ocean. (History) What attracts most people and archaeologists is the fact that there are almost 900 enormous stone figures that date back centuries in the past. (History) Over the years, there has been controversy about the exact purpose of the statues and how they were created. There are many questions I hope to answer in this excavation such as: Are there any more statues that haven’t been discovered? How did the people that created these statues manipulate and sculpt stone of such massive size? Although archaeologists have done some work on this site, I believe there is still more to be found and said about the history of the island, its people, and the message behind why these people constructed these figures.

These social dilemmas are related to common-pool resources. The problem of free riding can be an issue. . There has to be governance of common pool resources. If, for example collective action was man’s natural instinct then

With the commodification of natural resources, there becomes a dependency between those who control the resources and all those who need to use them.  At this stage of society people are no longer self-sufficient, but rely upon the network of society to provide food, shelter and jobs (Rousseau).  At this level of society, the founders most often control the resources and begin to live in excess compared to the rest of the populace.