“The Council of Pecans” is such a striking chapter to me because of how Kimmerer teaches us the concept of mast fruiting while also drawing a connection between this biological phenomenon and the importance of fostering a community of reciprocal relationships. Here, she’s talking about the pecan trees, but it’s easy to see how it applies to our communities as well:

“If one tree fruits, they all fruit—there are no soloists. Not one tree in a grove, but the whole grove; not one grove in the forest, but every grove; all across the county and all across the state. The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. Exactly how they do this, we don’t yet know. But what we see is the power of unity. What happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together. All flourishing is mutual.”

This seems to be a story that extends far beyond fruiting strategies in the natural world. Reciprocal relationships and the philosophy of respecting a shared resource, of ensuring community flourishing in order to benefit all rather than only a small group of individuals—that seems to be what this entire book is about. In fact, later on in the same chapter, Kimmerer goes on to say:

“Our lands were where our responsibility to the world was enacted, sacred ground. It belonged to itself; it was a gift, not a commodity, so it could never be bought or sold…land held in common gave people strength; it gave them something to fight for.”

And now I want to suggest Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons as a text that details a contrasting view of land and environmental resources, when the people involved have neither a relationship with the land nor do they reside within a community of reciprocal relationships. I’ve linked the full essay in the bolded text, for anyone interested in reading the whole thing—though I do want to add a quick note that the essay primarily concerns itself with overpopulation and Hardin makes the argument that human reproduction should be restricted/controlled in order to curb population growth, which is a belief that directly opposes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So, lol, that’s an L for him. However, the most significant and influential point of his paper (and what my environmental science/ethics classes studied the essay for) lies in the discussion of the commons and how “rational actors” will allegedly behave when presented with a shared resource:

“The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.”

“As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive component.”

“1) The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly +1.”

“2) The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision-making herdsman is only a fraction of -1.”

“Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another.... But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit—in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.”

Hardin’s description is familiar to all of us, I’m sure. We’ve seen the detrimental effects of unchecked pollution and resource use within our own lifetimes. We’re living in a time of unprecedented anthropogenic climate change and environmental degradation; we’ve seen photos of oil spills, of forest fires, of destruction caused by storms intensified through the effects of climate change. And chances are, we all have experienced some of this ourselves at one point or the other. So, it’s not hard to imagine that we know exactly what Hardin means when he says, “freedom in a commons brings ruin to all”.

But the crucial difference in the two viewpoints presented, to me, lies in the central assumption of how a “rational being” will behave. In Hardin’s essay, they are selfish and only concerned about their own individual gain. The system which Hardin writes about—and which we all know and have experienced first hand—favors these selfish free riders who look to maximize their own profit while exploiting the commons, over those who are more altruistic and willing to settle for less in order to help other people gain. When Kimmerer writes about the pecan trees and mast fruiting, when she speaks of the traditions and ethics of her own heritage, a “rational being” is one who remembers their community and knows their place within it. It’s someone who knows that all flourishing must be mutual if the community is going to survive.

Looking at these two texts side by side, the difference is so stark. I think Kimmerer’s work in writing, sharing, and communicating the Potawatomi teachings here is so fucking important, if only because they give us another way to imagine the world and the society in which we live in. Hardin’s paper is important because it illuminates the underlying framework by which our society operates in the present, and provides some solid principles around which our current environmental regulations and legislation have been shaped. “Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all”, he wrote, and we have a host of laws that are meant to protect the common people from the so-called rational beings seeking to maximize their own gain at the expense of our shared air and water and land.

But Kimmerer’s writings are important because they show us that it wasn’t always like this—and, as such things go, it doesn’t have to be like this forever.