The Future of the Human Race
Do you care about what will happen to human beings in a hundred, thousand, or million years? Does it matter how your actions might affect people in the future? And is optimism aligned with such a concern, whereas pessimism is associated with a lack of it—or vice versa?
Comments (36)
I care in the sense that I'm interested, but that's down to curiosity. I don't care much, in terms of empathy, for the subsequent generations of people that might exist in the distant future. Should I?
I do care about human beings into the future, the farther out, the less I care. I have kids, you see, and I actually do care what happens to them and my grandkids once I have them. It's understandable that Benkei might care less about the future based upon his avatar that shows him to be a scraggly hippy downing a beer with his kid in his lap. It's hard to care about tomorrow when you've given up on today.
Carrots,
G
And you thought I couldn't bring it down a notch.
It's hard to say, definitely my kids and grandkids because they are either in the present or in my lifetime, but I'll admit it gets less as you move out in time. It's the same geographically. I care about what happens to me and my neighbors more than those more distant from me, like, Canada, or somewhere stupid like that.
I suppose I can when I'm really really bored or lose my patience.
I try not to care too much, as I would then make proclamation of answers and tell 'em all what to do for their own good or else.
As for how my actions effect humans in 1 year or 10 years or 100 years or longer... gee whiz!
How the heck should I know how and if I'd effect them?
I'm just one of a whole host of variables. I'm not arrogant enough to think that I really MATTER.
Oh well...
... I guess others have different hobbies and degrees of taking those hobbies seriously... for themselves and others.
I try not to be that serious.
Meow!
GREG
Oh, G, you do make me laugh! To quote, you highlight the text and a 'quote' button should appear. Click it, and it sets up a quoted reply for you.
Aubergine,
S
Quoting jamalrob
I don't see this as being relevant unless the pessimism involves presuming we turn into a race of worthless individuals undeserving of pity.
In some cultures an ancestral continuum is perceived. I think it's sort of like: imagine looking into a mirror and grasping that you are looking into the eyes of your ancestors. In your heart, you should know that they bless you. If you can feel that, then you know you bless your own descendants.
Me.. I love future humans. Is there some action I could take to help them? I don't know. There are too many variables. I find I have a certain amount of faith in them, though.
Will we? I would assume so. Global Warming is going to be a really rough thing to deal with, but I feel like there is just too many of us to go extinct, at least from that dilemma. That does not mean it should be ignored, we should do things in the present to alleviate the problem.
As far as what we can do as individuals to make the lives of future humans more enjoyable, I would say the only thing we can do is live as ethically, and expand the limits of human understanding as much as we can.
But like @Sapientia above I wouldn't say it's an empathy for future individual human beings. Maybe I'm a bit like this:
The mass becomes a faceless blob, whereas, an individual stands out, therefore, we are able to connect or empathize better with them. It's a heavily used technique in journalism and literature. Character building and portrayal. Gets tricky when dealing with a large quantity.
Incidentally, it's also the reason it's easier to drop (cluster) bombs on people from the sky rather than face them in ground combat. Faceless mass + removal of intimate portrayal and contact aka the trolley problem.
"[i]Heaven and earth do not act from (the impulse of) any wish to be benevolent; they deal with all things as the dogs of grass are dealt with. The sages do not act from (any wish to be) benevolent; they deal with the people as the dogs of grass are dealt with.
May not the space between heaven and earth be compared to a bellows?'Tis emptied, yet it loses not its power; 'Tis moved again, and sends forth air the more.
[b]Much speech to swift exhaustion lead we see;
Your inner being guard, and keep it free.[/b][/i]"
-Laozi, "Daodejing", Legge translation, chapter 5.
http://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/daodejing05.php
Any individuals who exist long into the future are fictions to us. We cannot actually refer to them (as beings), any image I create or story I make up remains just a story. We can care about them in the same way that we can care about the characters in Harry Potter.
So all that's left is the empathy caused by the fictions of my imagination or this idea of humanity. And I don't really have any major dreams for humanity.
That said, we don't care - at the time - about that of which we're not conscious. When I read 'The Lord of The Rings' trilogy, I cared more about Frodo than about the possibility of distant future generations.
Most people would say, on a little reflection, that it has not. The ant, after all, has never seen Churchill, Or even a picture of Churchill, arid it had no intention of depicting Churchill. It simply traced a line (and even that was unintentional), a line that we can 'see as' a picture of Churchill. [/quote]
Even if we imagine someone in a detailed way and build up a view of their lives, then someone who fits the exact description comes into existence 100 years later. Our thoughts can not have been referring to them and any empathy we have felt could not have been directed at them.
In any event, I answered "yes", mostly because I can see how the decisions of my predecessors have both enriched and degraded the world I currently find myself in, and also how those decisions have impacted my own life for both the better and the worse. So in other words, precisely on the basis of my empathy for the denizens of future generations.
I selected "not at all", and although I have some buyer's remorse for that selection, I will nevertheless stand by it. My concern lessens with time and I would say looking beyond my lifetime it would be negligible. I don't hold a special place for humans per se in my deliberations. It would be a shame for life to be extinguished, but particular species are just winners of an evolutionary game of chance.
I'm sure as with your art examples there are some literary theories which would hold that the book is referring to John but I doubt any of them would hold that I, the author was referring to John when I wrote the book. Quoting Aaron R
The problem is not that these individuals in the future literally are fictional characters rather that we cannot refer to them. So when think we are talking about them (as individuals) we are really just talking about and feeling empathy towards fictional characters, as we fail to refer.
In your initial post you had stated in reference to the actual denizens of future generations that "we cannot actually refer to them (as beings)...we can care about them in the same way that we can care about the characters in Harry Potter". I think it is interesting to consider whether, in order for your statements to be true, they must not do the very thing they claim to be impossible, namely, refer to the set of actual individuals that our statements allegedly cannot refer to.
Leaving that quandry aside, I would take issue with the claim that we can care about future individuals only in the way that we can care about Harry Potter. In the spirit of responses already given by both @Baden and @Sapientia, I would argue that the main difference is that I can take actions today that have causal implications for the well-being of the denizens of future generations in a way that is obviously not possible with respect to fictional characters like Harry Potter (and therefore we might also feel responsible for what happens to those individuals in a way we wouldn't with respect to fictional characters).
Consider the case of the billionaire mogul who grew up poor and in the midst of extreme harship. Despite the adversity he managed to graduate high-school with honors, attend a public university on full scholarship and found a company that he sold 25 years later for a sum or $25 billion. Despite his success he feels extreme empathy toward those raised circumstances similar to those in which he was raised, and as a result he sets up a private foundation in his home town on the basis of an initial donation worth $1 billion. Any young person who graduates in good-standing from any public high school within the limits of that town will be eligible to recieve a full-ride scholarship to any public, in-State university of their choice. With proper investment and stuardship, the donation upon which the foundation was established should never become depleted.
We can't do that kind of thing for Harry Potter. I would say there is a legitimate sense in which this man's empathy is directed at the actual denizens of future generations, despite the fact that he will never meet the vast majority of them, will never know any of the details of their particular stories and may even be long-dead by the time most of them recieve their scholarships. That's because the establishment of his foundation is also the establishment of a causal relationship between himself and every actual student that eventually receives money from that grant, and I would argue that this is what both constitutes the difference between our empathy toward fictional and future individuals, and also allows for the possibility that our empathy and our thoughts might, in some sense, legitimately refer to the latter.
If I knew the language of my initial post would have caused as much discussion I would have been more careful with the wording.
Quoting Aaron R
Yes there is an issue here and I'm not sure how to deal with it. For instance I don't think there is a problem with saying that 'the population of Australia will be under 10 million people in the year 2115'.
I think it's likely that we can care about the situation but not about the people involved in it. Quoting Aaron R
I agree that we don't care about them in the exact same way that we care about fictional character from Harry Potter. When I wrote that I was anticipating the response 'if they are fictional how can we care about them'. A much closer comparison would be if I told you a news story. I show a picture and tell you about a child that was forced into marriage at the age of 11. The Husband was alcoholic and abusive etc. We can feel empathetic towards this child even if unknown to us the news story is a complete fiction, something I just made up. We think we are feeling empathetic to an actual person but we are not.
This is also something we cannot do for HP even though it is also fictional. I understand that this example is different from yours in that we cannot change the situation but I don't think that's critical. My general hypothesis that I am working with here is that in order to feel empathetic towards people we need to have some contact with them or be told a story about them. I'm not sure if you find that to be the case with yourself. The second part is to say that whatever story we tell ourselves about the individuals existing in 100 years time is fictional.
If you think that we don't need a story in order to feel empathy towards people then my logic fails. And I really don't think your millionaire can care about the person who receives his money.
There is a great book about this question: Earth Abides by George R. Stewart; 1939. A young man on a hike becomes extremely ill in a cabin and wakes up sometime later (a week or so). He drives back toward Oakland where he and his parents live, but soon notices there is no traffic. No people in small towns. He finds a copy of "the last San Francisco Examiner" (reduced to one page) from which he learns that most of the world's people have died from a plague. He finds a few people who survived, and they form a little community of maybe 10 people.
The young man grows old. He tries to teach the young, but succeeds mostly in teaching the young people how to make and use bows and arrows, more as a game. It's something he can give the future. The community flourishes, but gradually reverts to a more primitive way of life. The young are not interested in learning to read, and eventually they give up on guns too, and find bows and arrows work better (they can make them themselves). It appears that life will go on.
We can't do much for the future beyond not wrecking the present.
As far as I'm concerned, only future intelligence matters.
Quoting 180 Proof
Care to elaborate? Are you insinuating that future non-intelligent life doesn't matter, and by extension intelligent life's existence does not depend on its interaction with non-intelligent life?
Well, of course I don't want the future generation to go extinct, we have walked a long long path, our ancestors have sacrificed a lot. But it certainly depends on how the people around the world would possibly end up being like in about an hundred years and how society would be in that moment and bla bla bla
Why does this question even matter much? Is this a psychopath test or something? : | Too much less info for it I guess. We certainly have bigger questions to think about. Our main concern should be "Trying to develop the world into an Utopia in a hundred years!"
I have hope humanity grows up, but right now, too many morons rule parts of our world. Let them die, by old age or stupidity, then the world of tomorrow belongs to the people who have gone past the ignorance of the past.
I have no sympathy for the bullshit of the current. It collapses in on itself and then I'll just eat popcorn and wait for the next show.
No one actually thinks about hundreds and thousands of years into the future. For most people, it's just masturbation to dive into such fantasies. A dream, something unreal. But for those who actually care about the future of humanity, it's hard not to despise the trivial behavior of humanity right now.
In the perspective of millennia before us, how trivial everyone becomes.