Choices

Imagine sitting down at a banquet. You are famished. As you eat, others keep joining you at the table to eat as well. There’s pleasant background music. The food is totally tasty. Life is grand.

For awhile, as you eat, you see that servers regularly replace empty trays. But as you eat and new comers join you at the table, you see bare spots appear on the table. Also, you hear servers gossip about the kitchen running out of supplies and that some of its appliances are failing.

Also, weirdly, the longer you sit and eat, the hungrier you feel. Actually you see that everyone at the table seems to be eating more and eating faster. You soon appreciate that with more people coming and with the supply failure then the banquet will not suffice.

What do you do? Do you go find another banquet house? Do you reduce your consumption? Do you stop eating and remedy the supply shortfall? Do you try to convince everyone to reduce theirs as well? Or do you ignore the information and just continue eating?

Using this as an analogy to our situation on Earth then do you see the value of a social contract for humans together with the other life forms that share Earth?