The Tragedy of Nonchalance and The Commons of Community

By: Pranati Wadhawan, Staff Writer

read while listening to: Rein Me In by Sam Fender and Olivia Dean

It’s Monday evening, and a lot of us are gathered in White Auditorium to hear the first of many "nota bene” talks. For those that aren’t graduating—nota bene is Latin for “note well” or “take notice,” and every year, Kellogg gathers esteemed professors to speak to the graduating class about something they’d like for us to take note of.

Author (bottom, right) and her 'village'

Today’s session is by Professor David Besanko, and he delves into the concept of the “tragedy of the commons:" essentially when everyone acts in their own self-interest, it leads to the depletion and eventual collapse of a common resource through overuse. And while he grounds this in topics like climate, social science, and economics, I can’t help but think of a different type of tragedy of commons—the tragedy of nonchalance and the commons of community. 

I’m simultaneously thinking about one of the best articles I’ve read recently—Nubia Assata’s piece “The Cost of Convenience: The Lost Art of Relationship Cultivation.” Assata writes, “relationships depend on the little inconveniences that we are willing to make” and that our devotion to individualism has “by steady attrition eliminated 'the village;' our lives no longer involve spontaneous visits to friends’ houses because the cost of transport is too high, we no longer borrow the odd hammer or pack of sugar because we could get it ordered to us within hours, and we rarely ask for favors because our relationships have become transactional.” I love the way she phrases it—“the inconvenient choice is the rebellious choice." Because isn’t’ that right in today’s world? Where everyone wants a village, but no one wants to make the inconvenient choice of being a villager?

There used to be a time when we believed in this concept though. I think back to 2015 in Mumbai, when I was about to leave for NYU for the first time—moving so far away from home to New York City and embarking on this big journey where no one knew where it would lead me. And there, by the departures gate of the airport, were all my friends and family—some having driven over an hour to get there—just to wish me luck and say goodbye. Because that's what you do when you love someone. You show up.

I love airports for exactly this reason... They’re the one place in the world where showing unfiltered, unbridled emotion doesn’t get met with judgement. What happened to airport drop offs and pickups just for the sake of getting that last goodbye? Was it the convenience economy built on Uber, Doordash, Hinge, and now Claude? Or did we lose our intentionality for community somewhere between “protecting our peace” and “drawing boundaries”? Did we deplete the commons of community by acting in our own self-interest?

Author: middle, left. Refusing to give out at the last mile (literally)

I observe this at Kellogg often. The interesting thing about this place is that it is a microcosm of our larger lives—a smaller version of “the commons,” if you will. And because the commons are small enough that our investment into anything is so highly visible, our self-interest often means we are afraid to be seen trying things at all. I find this highly ironic (especially when I play a part in this)—that everyone at Kellogg has a track record of being good at things—we don’t get here unless we are a baseline level of competent—that’s table stakes. So, when our tragedy of nonchalance sets in, it’s because there is a particular kind of risk aversion we operate with. We’re afraid of being seen at the beginning of something—to be seen trying and being horrible at it. I’ve felt this in so many ways—never having played golf before, or taken a finance class before, or trained to run a race. What if my golf swing sucks and misses every time? What if I never truly understand how to do a DCF, and everyone thinks that’s the most basic thing in finance? What if I gave out at the last mile of the race?

And so, the nonchalance almost becomes a performance of not caring because caring, and then failing publicly, is the scariest possible outcome. It becomes, “golf isn’t something I even care about,” or “grades don’t even matter.” And suddenly, we’ve attached so much meaning to not caring about the outcome because it doesn’t suit us, that we have fallen out of love with the process. Because it isn’t convenient. And if Kellogg truly is the best place to practice all these things we are too scared to do, by people who are all so competent but simultaneously secretly afraid of the same thing, it means that the inconvenient, rebellious, try-hard choice becomes so unfavorable that no one wants to make it. We all want to protect our peace and perform nonchalance in all parts of our lives because it makes us feel safe.

Rarely do we call to hear someone’s voice if a text is more convenient. Rarely do we show up to someone’s house with leftovers or baked goods. Or show up to a friend’s birthday when it’s on a weekday night because we want to “stay in” for a long day ahead (birthdays are important!). The airport arrivals look emptier now. The village disappears, not because people don’t want it (in fact, we want it more than ever), but because wanting it too visibly or too much feels like vulnerability, and vulnerability, in life and even more so at Kellogg, feels overexposed.

One of the author's famous SGDs. Author: back right, in black

Prof. Besanko ends his talk positing something social scientists have been speaking to for a while: we need a collective interest among users for the commons to be sustained. And somewhere at the beginning of my second year after a summer away from Kellogg, I had to remind myself of this—that if I had come to Kellogg in search of community, then others had to have as well. I just needed to find the unlock. So, I committed to hosting two SGDs a week where I invited three people, and they each got to bring a +1 no one else knew. I cooked and hosted so that we could create a space for a dinner party and genuine connection. I went to birthdays even when I was exhausted from six hours of class or running on six hours of sleep. I showed up to events I committed to just because that commitment had to hold more integrity for me.

When you show up, people notice. So, consider this a promise to do my part in choosing the rebellious choice. To be intentional and put in the labor of building someone else’s village—and maybe, hopefully, we’ll look around and see that without realizing, we were actually building our own all along.

Read More Personal Essays: The MBA Birthday: A Social Case Study The Luck:Failure Ratio of Kellogg Navigating Grief in Business School  Becoming a Parent in Business School