Twice today I have read someone who is worried what people
in the future will think of us. Have I
been seeing this more lately, or is it just an accident? In both cases, the worrier was an environmentalist.
It just seems to both them to think that people in fifty years would look back
and not give us a good grade. Some sense of having let the world down, I think.
I have children and grandchildren. Any idea of someone fifty years from now
evaluating my performance has nothing to do with any environmental actions.
Those relatives are more important evaluations to me. Yet a general grade from the future
is not completely opaque to me. Historians, professional and amateur, look at
actions of individuals and groups in the past and weigh whether their decisions
were good. One of the problems with this
is that we know what happened next and much of what passed seems inevitable to
us now. We have a hard time putting
ourselves into the heads of the people fifty or five hundred years ago, when
the outcome was not known. But we like
to have the imagined approbation of those who will come after.
Perhaps the two are related?
Environmentalists don’t seem to be people having a lot of children. Decades ago I read a magazine article (?)
complaining that once the faithful had children they didn’t come around to the
protests anymore, stopped volunteering, and eventually let their memberships
lapse. I wish I could find it again. Perhaps that’s not true anymore anyway, as
popular culture has been known to change.
Still, Bill McKibben’s book about having children was Maybe One. The cart and horse may have
gotten disguised on this one. Those who
have less interest in having children may go looking for some other way to have
a lasting impact. Those with children
are more likely to seek out religious or cultural continuity to give their time
and resources to. (Some without children might prefer those as well. The
aesthetic pleasure of reducing carbon doesn’t have the same oomph as a library
or a chapel, I don’t think.)
Looking back on ourselves from an imagined future perspective
would seem to be less self-centered, anyway. It would bring the mind to larger
questions, of what’s really important in
the long run? Where are the greatest risks and dangers to our descendants? Those
seem at least a step up from keeping the focus on ourselves and whatever stuff
we can get now. Thinking of others and all that.
Or not. Those questions are variations of what do I want my legacy to be? It
depends on what side of the telescope you are looking into. Neither more nor
less self-centered as how I might ask the question of myself. Answering the question in an environmentalist
way is a declaration that culture is less important than physical
surroundings. My opinions on that are
definite. Imagining a future world that has important Christian values
preserved – no, I should be more direct and say a world where there are still
Christians - and western values derived from them such as a generalised
egalitarianism, charity, representative government, or self-sacrifice, I don’t
much care about whether we have “enough” species, or whether there is some
discomfort in living because we’ve broken some important pieces of furniture,
and not even whether some places are no longer beautiful that once were. I would prefer to preserve any good things,
certainly, but varieties of shrimp or whether some mountains have houses
instead of forests are down the list.
Imagining the other future, where we preserved the world to
look much as it does now and even reclaimed some places so that they are theme
parks to the year 1000 (BC or AD), but there are no churches, no major thirds,
no freedom to choose one’s work or mate or reading material, I don’t want it to
exist. I don’t care what happens to a
human race which gave all that up, and I don’t care what grade they give me on
my carbon footprint or whether we embraced wind power quickly enough.
At the change of the millennium I sealed up a cheap time
capsule in a metal bin designed for the purpose. It may preserve the souvenirs,
objects, and writings. It includes some things from my own mother and reaching
back into my family’s cultural past.
Some things I wrote are already out-of-date and a little embarrassing.
My children might still be around in 2100, given improvements in
life-extension. Some of my
granddaughters and any later grandchildren will certainly still be here. If my
church or some other followers of Christ get to see it it might have value. I
did care at the time how they will view these things, and whether I can reach
into the future for one last influence. I care some about what grade they will
give me. But all those will be old at
that point, not likely to change much.
Any deeper descendants, great-great grandchildren, if they find what I
held dear to be unimportant or even occasion for mockery…
Then screw ‘em. I
could care less how they view me looking back. If my morality seems generally
wrong (I don’t quibble minor changes)
and their new improved one much better, then they are wrong and are no kin of
mine. Is that harsh? Taken live, I might be even more emphatic, if I returned like Jacob Marley to speak to them. If I don’t care about those, even those, why on earth would I care what
the Best People might think of me looking back?
5 comments:
They will, of course, think the pictures of you look silly, that the causes you fought for are hard to empathize with, and that they are infinitely wiser than you were. After all, they think they know how the story came out, and that gives them the "perspective" to say either you were obviously right or obviously wrong.
It takes some effort to understand the battles of old--the slogans aren't connected as clearly with everyday life. But often they turn out to be very similar to ones we fight today.
But the balance between the individual and the tribe does vary a lot. What do Chinese Christians think of the American churches?
I expect that, up until the end, there will be Christians on the Earth. "Who serves my Father as a son is surely kin to me."
Ha, I don't think I'd mind so much about the "causes," that were more individual. But perhaps the line between which are important parts of my culture and which are optional isn't so clear to me as I'd think.
One of the themes in some of Heinlein's works is the idea that people still longed for the earth that was, even as mankind was flung out into the larger universe. I've always loved that idea caught up in The Green Hills of Earth that we'd still think about earth and what it meant even if we could travel the stars.
Not entirely sure how that relates to your point, but now I'm dreaming of space...
Granite Dad, Rah rah RAH!
We will be looked upon as somewhat dumb, because we do not know what people will know 30 years later. As they will, in 60 years.
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