Heilbroner. Who Cares If Humans Survive?

Transcription

1 Heilbroner What Has Posterity Ever Done for Me? 1 Who Cares If Humans Survive? Why do you care if humans are still on this planet in 100 years, 200 years, 1000 years? Do you think anything you do now will make a difference in 100, 200, or a 1000 years? Why should I lift a finger to affect events that will have no more meaning for me seventy-five years after my death than those that happened seventy-five years before I was born? (348) 2

2 How Long Do We Want to Stay on the Plane? Imagine a plane circling the planet The plane started circling the planet when the earth began and now, 4.5 billion years later, just made it once around Humans got on the plane eight miles before the end of the first circumnavigation Industrial humans got on six feet before the end The earth s sun will last for another 12 billion years, roughly enough time for the plane to make it round three more times How long do we want to stay on the plane? How long can we stay on the plane? 3 Is There a Rational Answer to The Question of Posterity? No. From an economist s perspective there is no rational answer. What is the economist s perspective? Is this a problem that logic and rational calculations will care little for what happens to future generations? Heilbroner thinks so. 4

3 Adam Smith s Rational Person What would you save? Imagine an earthquake in China that kills millions How would you live your life knowing this happened? Now, imagine that tomorrow you will lose your little finger How would you live your day knowing this will happen? 5 Human Reaction Adam Smith thinks that the average human will be more disturbed by the loss of one s pinky than by the death of millions Does this mean that the average human would prefer the loss of millions to his own little finger? Smith: Human nature startles at the thought and the world in its greatest depravity and corruption never produced such a villain as would be capable of entertaining it. What prevents humans from acting in their own self-interest? Smith thinks that a moral conscience prevents such acts of extreme self-interest 6

4 Appraisal vs. Responsibility Smith s thought experiment clarifies the debate It is one thing to evaluate situations by appeal to rational selfinterest It is another thing to take responsibility for the results of one s rational calculations For it is one thing to appraise matters of life and death by the principles of rational self-interest and quite another to take responsibility for our choice. (349) 7 What Are We Justified in Doing? What are we justified in doing in order to preserve the planet for future generations? Restrictions on population growth? Restrictions on consumption and wealth? Restrictions of some countries upon others? What should guide our actions? Rational self-interest? Religion? Survivalist ethics? 8

5 Heilbroner s Hope Yet I am hopeful that in the end a survivalist ethic will come to the fore not from the reading of a few books or the passing twinge of a pious lecture but from an experience that will bring home to us, as Adam Smith brought home to his man of humanity, the personal responsibility that defies all the homicidal promptings of reasonable calculation...i must rest my ultimate faith on the discovery by these future generations, as the ax of the executioner passes into their hands, of the transcendent importance of posterity for them. (349-50) 9 Answered the Question? Has Heilbroner answered the question with which he started the essay? Will mankind survive? Who knows?... Who cares? How will we come to care about what happens to future generations? How will we motivate ourselves to keep the plane aloft? 10