The Dynamic Center: Why People Should Care About the Future

Posted by Dan Martin on 04.13.2007

Contra-Nihilism or Why those darn Germans in The Big Lebowski were wrong

"Let those who preach departure from the world depart." - Nietzsche

I warned Joshua White, the lightening rod of 411mania, that I would take on his most recent column. I then backed off of my email, and he encouraged me to stick with it. With that shot of confidence, I am off to defend the notion that the future might be important, that rights are not the only determinant of value and well let's just say I had a lot of problems with White's column so a typical introductory paragraph might linger. I am just rolling up my sleeves and diving into my counter argument. White's statements will all be in italics with my responses below his text.

Prelude: I will agree with White that science is not unanimous on global warming, but it should be pointed out that the weight of opinion does seem to be settling on one side. Now, we get to his really interesting question:

But a different and equally interesting question than whether or not global warming is man-made is the question of why we're trying to save the earth in the first place. (Typically, those who are members of Judeo-Christian religions believe that we should take care of the earth because it is not ours. For these people, this discussion won't really concern you, but you can analyze the column for what it is.)

Certainly, White has hit on one of the reasons followers of Judeo-Christian faith traditions are concerned about ecology, but I think there are two problems with White's analysis here. First, ecological concern for the Judeo-Christian is likely based upon more than God being the source of the earth. To keep this brief, a sacramental world view in which grace is mediated by temporal/physical mediums, eschatology (hope for future redemption), the incarnation of God into worldly flesh etc. All offer other reasons Jews (not so much the incarnation here) and Christians might be concerned with portecting nature.

Second, many non-Judeo-Christian faith traditions have robust views of the value of nature. Animistic religions, Native Americans for instance, believe nature is the horizon of the transcendent. Monistic faiths such as Hinduism also see the physical world as being part of the divine all. So White's column likely does not apply to Jews, Christians, Muslims (due to tracing back to Abraham as well), members of animistic religions, Hindus and of course our Neo-pagan friends. This is not leaving a large chunk of people for which his column is applicable.

If our generation were to be the last, then global warming would be a non-issue. Who would care about pollution, rising temperatures or any of the consequences thereof if we're the last people to inhabit this planet. The reason that we care about the planet is because we want the world to survive for the future people that will eventually live here. My question is why should we care about the future generations?

White may be correct. Humanity has become aware of the globe. However, even the most hardcore materialist atheists argue that the mechanism of evolution is the working of "selfish genes" that seek either sexual or asexual reproductive success. By being successful in reproduction, these "selfish genes" are passed along and continue to exist in future generations. Hence, even hardcore materialist atheists find reason for preserving the environment – namely, a pristine environment gives their selfish genes a chance to continue indefinitely in future generations. Aside from virtually every faith tradition that finds some orientation toward the transcendent (it is hard to transcend one's current situation if one is totally indifferent about the future), materialist atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, also articulate reasons to work for a better future. We are fast running out of groups that disregard the future.

Let me ask a rhetorical question:
Would there be anything morally wrong if I decided that I wanted to destroy my 10 year old, beaten up sofa? …

I am a big fan of analogies, but this analogy lacks so much information that it is useless. Nature which is almost infinitely complex has been boiled down to a broken down couch. Hopefully, my critique will further dismantle this couch analogy as we proceed.

I believe that this principle holds for all non-moral agents. That is to say, anything that is an inanimate object has no rights, and anything can be done to it. (However, we cannot take the couch that we hate and drop it on someone. This is not because we can't hurt the couch, but because we can't hurt the person beneath the couch.)

Darwin vs. Descartes. Descrates famous "I think therefore I am" links existence to thought and anything that does not think does not fully think or have any rights. Darwin paints a picture of nature in which mind emerges from matter not the other way around. Even if one does not subscribe to evolutionary biology, we can look to our dinner 2 days ago and see that what once was not thinking or feeling has now been incorporated into our bodies including brain cells etc. Hence, the inanimate natural world may not be thinking or feeling right now, but the potential for mind to emerge from matter does exist. It can happen via metabolism in the short term or biological evolution in the long term. In either case, a healthier ecosystem can support more thinking agents than a non-healthy ecosystem. White's presupposition that thinking agents are the only thing deserving protection betrays his case. He obviously values thinking and sees it as something deserving of protection. Therefore, thinking has value. He is faced with saying "Do not care about choices between futures that either contain potential to support value laden thought or a future in which thinking human agents are limited in number and health because thinking moral agents are the only thing worth protecting." Confused? I sure was.

Maybe a hardcore Cartesian dualist could see a broken down couch as being equivalent to a habitat that potentially gives rise to and nourishes tens of thousands of living organisms including thinking moral agents. I cannot.

The same is true of corpses. While people might not like the idea of desecrating the body of someone we once loved, I would claim that there is nothing immoral in doing so. They feel no pain, they have no rights. They are not persons any longer. Now, we may not want to do damage the body of a dead person, we may feel revulsion to someone who does so, but there shouldn't be anything wrong with the act. Much like the sofa, you can't do anything immoral to something that is a non-moral being.

It all comes back to Plato. White has come to the conclusion that most if not all morality is constructed. The Sophists who Socrates argued against held a similar position. The older Sophists believed all morality was the result of custom or a moral compact. If those old crusty Sophists are correct, we can say corpses are protected from desecration in just about every moral compact found in human history. Consequently, even if morality is just a human construct with no grounding in transcendent truth, White's callous approach to non-living non-thinking entities is still not acceptable in virtually all cultures thoughout all time.

A younger more radical Sophist named Thrasymachus argued that all morality was what the strong could impose on the weak. Even if Thrasymachus' bleak view of reality is correct, I find it hard to believe that many people could be strong enough to impose desecration of a loved-one's remains on the masses. As stated above, I am having a hard time finding people for whom White's column applies.

More importantly, White once again narrows his example to the point that it is too individualistic and overvalues rights as the only basis for protecting something. Context gives meaning to just about everything. I could say the word "horse" and it might suggest any number of things to the listener. If I say "I played a game of horse at the park" vs. saying "stop beating a dead horse" vs. "Secretariat was one hell of a horse", I give a lot of different meanings due to context. Similarly, corpses have living breathing contexts. Desecrating a corpse harms more than the corpse. It may not hurt as much as dropping a couch on someone, but desecrating a corpse is likely to cause a lot of harm if the analogy is given any sort of further context.

Also, value judgments based upon the true, the beautiful and the good are found in the heart of Western thought. By White's notion, we are all too damned sentimental about physical stuff. Is the U.S. flag just a piece of cloth? If so, why not polish your boots with it? Is my wedding band just gold? Is so, why not melt it down for scrap? Is a $100 bill just paper? If so, why not rip it to shreds? I will freely admit that much of the meaning we attach to art, literature, wedding rings, money and flags is socially constructed, but that does not mean it is not really valuable either.

If the value that either emerges or is constructed is unreal, then why have rights for anything at all? White says that only moral agents deserve protection. Why is that? White is just as physical as a corpse. He is made up of atoms or quarks just like all of the stuff he says has no rights. He may be capable of seeing value in thinking agents but not value in ecosystems or a flag, but what if we simply argue everything is made up of seemingly dead atoms? We think we think, but in reality we are no different than inanimate matter with enough microscopic investigation. So, why not just desecrate living bodies along with corpses? At the molecular level they are pretty damned similar. What gives one the right to go undesecrated and not the other? My guess is that we read reality as being more rich than simply being made up of dead stuff. If that is true, protecting ecosystems might actually make some sense.

Now ask yourself: Are those who live in the future moral agents? Do they have any rights?

Admittedly the first answer that comes to mind is "yes." But why? And how? How can the future generations have any rights when they don't yet exist? Much like those who are long dead (and therefore have no rights) the people that will live don't now have any moral status. You can't hurt them and you can't violate any of their rights

Does the future have rights and does it deserve cultivation and protection are two different questions. I am not sure the counter-factuals White offers about one set of actions leading to the non-existence of people in a world with a failing environment make any sense. Logicians can argue if counter-factuals have truth value. I will leave that to one side. I will however offer my reason for protecting nature and to quote the X-Files, fight the future.

Let me ask White to do a thought experiment. Take a pen and scribble on one side of a page and then write a line from Shakespeare on the other. Chemically the two sides of the paper are identical. However, the Shakespeare line has something more going on than the scribbling. Information and macro-organization exist on one side of the paper and not the other.

The natural world may not be thinking or feeling at the moment. However, if we extend the writing example a bit, White's valued thinking agents are bodily. The physical world might function like an alphabet. Whether it is a multivitamin or the minerals in my skeleton, they look the same from a physical or in our case alphabetical view point just like the letter "t" is identical if used in this column or in a poem by William Blake. Having the same parts does not mean something has the same meaning or value.

Now, imagine an alphabet with 13 letters instead of 26. In that case, the number of interesting stories that could be written would decline, vocabulary would decline, beauty would decline all because potential for future use declined. Ecological devastation does the same thing to future flourishing that pruning the alphabet would do to language. Preserving ecology is a lot like preserving the alphabet. If humans are in an environment conducive to flourishing, that means more flourishing thinking moral agents. A present that is pregnant with possibilities seems to be worth protecting. A stillborn future is not morally responsible even if future entities do not (yet) have rights. The potential for future manifestations of beauty, value and thought within nature is enough cause to protect vulnerable resources and cultivate desired possibilities for the future in the here and now.

Finally, White's very act of trying to convince people not to care about the future is rendered incoherent by his very efforts. His actions are attempting to persuade people because he seemingly thinks the world is better off if people agree with his position. This attempt to persuade seems to mean that the future holds some value for White. If he really did not care about the future, why would he care if you or I cared about the future? Why try to shape our opinions? White writes because he sees some value in it. Given that most people read columns after they are written it means that future readings must be part of the value a writer sees in the writing process.