[News] Why worry about future generations?

[FNX Magokiler]

Our societies are in the hustle and bustle of the present moment. In the past, when cathedrals were started, it took centuries to complete them. We pay less attention than before to our ancestors and dead. November 1 was once an important date in the calendar and the cult of the dead was very much alive in societies like China, with a very acute sense of transmission between generations. All this has diminished.

What, in fact, are our good reasons to refute Groucho Marx's joke: “But why worry about future generations? Have they taken care of us?” Here is a very active area of moral philosophy, this branch of philosophy that some accuse of being sometimes empty, but which over the centuries has profoundly changed our societies, allowing them to be more open and inclusive.

We could answer that question by saying that there is no need to philosophize, we love our children and grandchildren and what happens to them concerns us, above all. Yes, our children and grandchildren, but do we go beyond that? It is striking to see that our societies have enormously expanded their spatial horizon, due to globalization and the incredible openness of the media. What is happening these days on the Libyan coast or in Morocco worries us much more than it would have worried us in the past.

But this seems to be detrimental to the time horizon. Our societies are in the hustle and bustle of the present moment. In the past, when cathedrals were started, it took centuries to complete them. We pay less attention than before to our ancestors and dead. November 1 was once an important date in the calendar and the cult of the dead was very much alive in societies like China, with a very acute sense of transmission between generations. All this has diminished.

 

 

Among an immense literature, I particularly highlight Samuel Scheffler's book, Why Worry About Future Generations? A first current of thought on this question, says Scheffler, comes to us from utilitarian philosophers, very active in the Anglo-Saxon world and in vogue among economists. The basic principle for them is the search for the maximum well-being of the po[CENSORED]tion. They must be recognized for having been the first to expand the circle of what we understand by “po[CENSORED]tion”: all humans alive today, but also those who will live tomorrow. It is also to them that we owe the openness to broader issues, such as the moral rights of animals and other living species, beyond humans.

However, there are certain contradictions in this approach. Should we think about total well-being, which would mean that an increasing human po[CENSORED]tion would meet the goal, at the risk of a deterioration in individual well-being? Or in average well-being, which makes us fall into the paradox of favoring a sharp demographic decline so that each of us is more comfortable in the future (an argument that attracts some environmentalists)? Let's go even further in the direction of those who say they refuse to have children so as not to make them endure living on a degraded planet.

Let's imagine stopping having children. We, the last generations to live, could gobble up without worrying too much about the planet, knowing that once freed from this invasive species that is the human race, our Earth, our Gaia, will recover – it has time on its side – the little damage what these vulgar mites that dare to scratch its surface have done to it.

 

https://www.elmostrador.cl/noticias/opinion/columnas/2023/09/24/por-que-preocuparse-por-las-generaciones-futuras/