Should we care what the world is going to be like in 200 years?

Syzygys

Syzygys

As a mother, I am telling you
Valued Senior Member
Sure, if you are a parent or grandparent, you want to leave a nice, healthy, clean world to your children. But should we really care how the world looks like in 2200?

People in the 1600s didn't worry about 4-5 generations down the road. True, the world was changing with much less pace as today. I guess this worry about the future is a result of humankind's ability to change its enviroment with an accelerated speed. Still, there is such a thing as adaptation, next generations will adopt to their new enviroments.

And again, what's my moral obligation to generations that I am far away from??
 
Someone cared about the future enough to let you have it (ie. they didn't burn everything and ransac everything), you might want to repay the debt.

Besides, who says you're going to die?
 
No, We shouldnt worry about it. We might want to consider it in some of our decicions, but how are we to say what is going to happen. The best decision is to make choices affecting the NOW and the NEAR Future. Because in 150 years the NEAR future will be our 200 years ahead future.

But now we are just getting into details about when we should stop caring. the truth is, if we have a decision to make that we could see effecting people in 200 years, then we should try and benefit them if at all possible. But there is probobly higher odds favoring Jesus himself comming back to save xmas with Santa Claus than any decision we make intentionally affecting that time in the way we intended it.

i.e. look at our government. decisions were made to create this country, but I doubt that they really cared about us in the year 2006 and how their rules would effect us. Instead they made rules that would be good for 50 years then they assumed that some would be changed to accompany sociological change. If any.
 
The moral obligation is that we should care. The reality is that most don't. The truth is that what's more important to the living is the NOW.
 
Worrying is futile. Action is what is needed now to change the path were are on. If no action from personal to governmental levels then why 'care' at all?
 
Yeah! Screw the next generation, it's not like they'll help me when I'm old and in a wheelchair! *shakes fist and wheels along muttering*
 
I think we do have some obligation toward the future...you shouldn't burn down somebody's house even though they haven't moved in yet.... but that doesn't mean you have to use every waking moment preparing it and make it neat for them.

If every generation concerned itself for the next 50 years, we'd be ok.
 
tablariddim said:
The moral obligation is that we should care. The reality is that most don't. The truth is that what's more important to the living is the NOW.
Click to expand...
sadly thats true :(
 
Many of the people in past generations did not care enough about the future. At some point it catches up with us.

What goes around comes around, and sometimes it only gets the people who are available.
 
tablariddim said:
The moral obligation is that we should care.
Click to expand...

And just where did that moral obligation come from? Was that moral obligation flying through space and Earth caught it somehow?
 
Syzygys said:
And just where did that moral obligation come from? Was that moral obligation flying through space and Earth caught it somehow?
Click to expand...

You didn't know that moral obligations just fly around all over, just waiting to be caught and domesticated? Geez, where have you been living ...in a cave? ....LOL!

Baron Max
 
Caring is instinctively programmed, learned from our elders or other authorities, or decided by reasoning.
  • We're a pack-social species like dogs. We have an instinct to care about the survival of our pack.
  • We have uniquely massive brains and a uniquely long stage of immaturity. Our elders and other authorities fill those brains with ideas to augment, balance and interpret our instincts.
  • Our reasoning supplies the rest.
The ideas our elders teach us include:
  • We long ago expanded our pack from a large family unit into a civilization.
  • Therefore caring about the survival of our enlarged pack now extends beyond our family and acquantances to all the members of our civilization, even those who are hardly more than statistical abstractions on the far side of the planet.
  • Civilization is sustained by processes that span many generations.
  • Therefore caring about the survival of our enlarged pack extends beyond the two or three generations of progeny we will live to interact with directly.
As one of your elders--very nearly the eldest on this website--it is my responsibility to teach you all these things so that you will continue caring for the survival of this pack after I am gone.

Therefore, I hereby answer your question. Yes, you should all care about what the world will be like in 200 years.

Many of you have come to take my pontifications seriously because it is my good fortune to be a fairly decent teacher and I make my points convincingly. I don't just love you, I love your great-to-the-6th-power grandchildren who will be living on this planet in 200 years. I want them to have all the benefits of civilization and not have to live the survival-obsessed existence of the Neolithic Era--which by the way would only sustain about five percent of the earth's current human population, and only in a perfectly restored Neolithic ecosystem.

Every generation has its own issues to deal with regarding its responsibilities to the survival of civilization. Hardly any have gotten off easy, but until very recently blunders by, say, the Europeans or Indians were balanced by progress by, say, the Chinese or Arabs. That changed drastically in the 16th and 17th Century when the Europeans had the technology and motivation to actually destroy both civilizations in the New World.

It got worse during my lifetime. Nuclear fission weapons that could kill a large fraction of a million people in a couple of days were tested in actual combat, followed a few years later by successful demonstations of nuclear fusion weapons with one thousand times the destructive power and small, fast rocket-powered missiles that could carry them almost literally to any spot on earth. Civilization was now a single pack. World War II killed off one full percent of that pack, and with the exception of those first two nuclear bombs it was all done with weapons that were almost primitive by today's standards.

If you were perchance wondering why I take this question so seriously, this may explain it. At many junctures in my lifetime, World War Three could have started. It would probably not have exterminated our species but it could easily have destroyed civilization.

As I have stated before, it is commonly argued that the decisions made by (mostly) democratically elected national leaders at the end of World War One caused World War Two. By the domino effect World War Two caused the Cold War and the combination of decisions made at the end of World War One and during the Cold War were responsible for the current political climate that threatens to re-start the Crusades. (Check out my other posts for the details of that analysis and by all means google the issues and form your own opinions. A good elder wants his pack to challenge him with their own learning and reasoning because then he knows they're worthy. :))

The decisions made nine decades ago have a profound impact on your life. The people who made them were overcome with greed, racism, revenge, hubris, chavinism, and a lot of other emotions that do not promote the survival of civilization. The decisions we make will surely have a profound impact on the people who will live here 200 years from now.

Please don't let them down.
 
To give a short reply, I might agree up to 2 generations, thus about 50-60 years. That's where I draw the line for 2 reasons:

1. A humans can be/are responsible for their children and maybe grandchildren. Beyond that is pushing it.
2. Even if we would want to effect or teach the next generation down to the next 200 years, it is just not going to happen. Just like we don't live by 1800s standards, people in the 2200s won't be living by our standards.

Also we don't treat each other's children (or for that matter each other) piecefully, thus it is rather naive to expect it from us to do it with future generations. (well, the question was should....)
Another point: If humankind is destined for survival, future generations should be able to survive on whatever the previous generations pass down to them. If they can't make it, sorry, this race is just not for the long run...

Edit: To give a practical example. Let's say I am not going to willfully make their lifes harder, but I am also not willing to control my consumption just because someone is going to be born 200 years from now. Previous generations that far away didn't give a shit about us either...
 
If we don't care what's going to happen because we won't be alive, that's the same as saying you're going to kill yourself because you're going to die anyway. Most people will never leave their mark on the world, but a lot of those people want to live as long as they can anyway. Why? The same reason that people worry about the future. Instincts. I'm not worried about the furture though, because I have a baseless faith in our species, afterall, they brought forth a being as perfect as me, and that tells me they can do anything.
 
No we have no moral obligation because in reality we have no way of doing anything something done with the intent of helping could be changed through the process of time to be hurting. E.X. Manifest Destiny because of this the US expanded it gained the power it has today but it is viewed as an evil act because it harmed so many native americans, but does that make the US evil. This proves that anything we do know is pretty much irrelevant to whats going to happen 200 years down the line.
 
We are the most intelligent species on this planet and also the most destructive. We have the power to destroy the whole world for a great number of living things including our very own species. We may even have the power to destroy the earth itself.

The power to destroy is a given and obligates us with tremendous responsibility. The will to destroy is negative, counter productive and selfish as is the lack of will to protect and nurture what we have under us, as overlords of this world.

We can liken this to a large family that has inherited a big rambling house with its own land and water and which is self-sufficient. The duty and obligation of the family elders is to ensure that the house and land is maintained in good order for the good of all that are living and for those yet to come, because life is an ongoing process; future generations don't start 200 years from now, they start every single minute and they carry over into the future and nobody has the right to say, Fuck It I'm going to burn this house down and poison this water because it suits ME NOW and fuck the children that are being born this afternoon because it's going to be THEIR problem NOT MINE.

This is why, as 'intelligent beings' we have a duty, call it moral, ethical or otherwise, to ensure that we don't fuck up the planet for future generations. But, as I said before and, as confirmed by some of the replies, most don't care.
 
Syzygys said:
Sure, if you are a parent or grandparent, you want to leave a nice, healthy, clean world to your children. But should we really care how the world looks like in 2200?

People in the 1600s didn't worry about 4-5 generations down the road. True, the world was changing with much less pace as today. I guess this worry about the future is a result of humankind's ability to change its enviroment with an accelerated speed. Still, there is such a thing as adaptation, next generations will adopt to their new enviroments.

And again, what's my moral obligation to generations that I am far away from??
Click to expand...

The fact that we can care about the future is what seperates us from the other animals. Even if you don't have kids of your own, you still are responsible for the worlds children, they are going to have to grow up into your mess. And if you believe in reincarnation, you'll have to grow up into your mess too.
 
Syzygys said:
To give a short reply, I might agree up to 2 generations, thus about 50-60 years. That's where I draw the line for 2 reasons:

1. A humans can be/are responsible for their children and maybe grandchildren. Beyond that is pushing it.
2. Even if we would want to effect or teach the next generation down to the next 200 years, it is just not going to happen. Just like we don't live by 1800s standards, people in the 2200s won't be living by our standards.

Also we don't treat each other's children (or for that matter each other) piecefully, thus it is rather naive to expect it from us to do it with future generations. (well, the question was should....)
Another point: If humankind is destined for survival, future generations should be able to survive on whatever the previous generations pass down to them. If they can't make it, sorry, this race is just not for the long run...

Edit: To give a practical example. Let's say I am not going to willfully make their lifes harder, but I am also not willing to control my consumption just because someone is going to be born 200 years from now. Previous generations that far away didn't give a shit about us either...
Click to expand...

Also you have to understand that there may not be any humans left 200 years from now unless humans wake up and smell the big picture. Humans are the only species which can protect humans from extinction. When we fight ourselves, we only help the next plague wipe us out, it gets easier.
 
It sounds like a nice idea to think of future generations and treat the earth well, but it's not simple.

From an environmental point of view, just about everything we do has knock on effects. There is no way to live life at the levels we do without disrupting nature.

Industrialisation was where things started to go tits up. But it was also when life started to become enjoyable - new things were invented, life became easier, people had more money, etc. Industrialisation has left many scars and even though we're a bit more savvy today, a lot of problems are still being caused.

One of the big problems I see is a shortage of housing and the space to build housing. Living in a tiny flat that you pay a lot of money for decreases your enjoyment of life. Living in a shitty house, built on reclaimed marshland where your garden has no drainage decreases your enjoyment of life.

It's the price we pay though.

Every year we take more natural resources than can be replaced by nature. Every year more and more people are born, all of whom want to live materialistic lives, which is quite right.

Poisoning of ground water by industry, especially in 3rd world countries.

When the ice caps melt, which they probably will in 100 years, some areas are going to be underwater. Less space for people. The changing climate in certain areas - UK for example, without the N. Atlantic drift will be a lot colder than it is now. The 6,000,000 hectares of land a year that become desert, leaving less land to grow crops, mainly because of overgrazing or a monoculture of grown crops.

Environmentally, the world will have changed for the worse.

Unless we go back to the old ways, live locally and use our knowledge of the land to keep it sustainable, we're fucking up the earth.


Selfish as it may sound, I think the sacrifice we'd need to make today overshadows the thought of future generations. I'm not willing to give up my car, nice house, foreign food, mass produced stuff that I can buy cheaply.
 
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