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Chapter 2
OUR CORE VALUE
For us who live in your future, our core value is the well-being of future generations as well as our own generation. Our caring about humanity’s continued flourishing unifies us. It gives us a deep sense of meaning and purpose in the universe and in our own lives. And this core value provides an important foundation for our ethical and moral choices.
For us, nothing is more important than the continuous procession of new generations. Our core value is humanity’s ongoing flourishing. We treasure the continuous stream of human activities and accomplishments stretching from the distant past through the present moment into the far future.
No other value, goal, or priority is more important to us than the continued flourishing of humanity–the ongoing flow of people, events, culture, and changes that make up the total human mosaic. We treasure and value this as much as anything else in the universe (past, present, or future). We would not want the universe to lose or sacrifice this for the sake of anything else. The continuing unfolding of human history and culture in reasonably positive directions is our core value, our fundamental priority. We hope that it will be yours, too. We hope that you will use it as the foundation for your meaning in life and your ethics.
Imagine that you are a superbly wise and intelligent being with extraordinary capacities. Imagine that you are contemplating the entire universe with its countless stars, planets, asteroids, life forms, and civilizations. You are also contemplating the future of all of this, a future that will stretch over many eons. From this vast perspective of space and time, you ask yourself, “What is most important of all?” Surely the continuation of human society and culture over the centuries would be part of your answer (along with the continued flourishing of other diverse life and civilizations throughout the universe, of course). In the entire universe, surely nothing is more important than the development and flourishing of good, wise, intelligent, insightful, compassionate, advanced life. Humanity, despite its faults and errors, is one instance of such life. Its continued existence and maximum flourishing is our core value. What else could possibly be more important?
Our core value certainly does not downplay the importance of human civilization at the time you are reading this. Even though we are writing this in your future, even though we are the people whom you call “future generations,” we do not hold any period of human history as less important than our own. Just the opposite–we treasure the entire sweep of human activity over many centuries. We care about the continuous unfolding of the human drama through countless scenes that stretch from the remote past through the present and into the distant future. We care deeply about future generations, but we do not denigrate and shortchange our own present moment nor your present moment. The well-being, knowledge, compassion, and quality of life of the people who are alive at the moment you read this are just as important as those of people alive at some moment in the future–but not more important.
All of us are walking through history in the same continuous procession of human generations. In this sense we are all members of the same community and we achieve a kind of immortality by being part of this never-ending procession. Because we are all one, what you want and what we want are not all that different: egoism and altruism converge.
We hope that you will care as deeply about the wonderful array of life-forms on the planet earth as you do about future generations of human beings. These various plants, trees, animals, birds, and fish should be valued for their own sake, regardless of whether they are useful to you or not. It is appropriate to love and respect and revere nature, wilderness, natural processes, wild species, and natural beauty. You and we are an integral part of life on earth. Humanity is not separate from the planet and biosphere, nor somehow above it all. It is important to live harmoniously with whales, dolphins, birds, fish, apes, elephants, and other animals.
How much responsibility to future generations?
You may be asking just how much responsibility you should have to the next few generations that will follow yours. Should you aim to give them opportunities and advantages that far exceed your own? Is it legitimate to bequeath them a society and a planet that provide them with much less that your generations inherited? Or is some middle road the most appropriate?
For us, the key concept is equal opportunity for all generations. Each future generation should have resources and opportunities that are approximately equal to those of the previous generation. We hope that you will adopt this same viewpoint.
In some ways, you will inevitably leave future generations worse off than you are. You are using up certain irreplaceable resources, leaving certain toxic and radioactive wastes for them to cope with, and bequeathing to them some problems and debts that are worse than your own.
To counterbalance these, you must also leave future generations better off in certain other ways, such as fresh values and solutions, flourishing institutions, enhanced knowledge and technology, more efficient agriculture, better ways of making global and regional decisions, reduced prejudice and discrimination, and sharp limits to military activities and armed violence. Just to select a few more examples from the multitude of possibilities, you could aim for a world in which solar power and sustainable organic farming are widespread, population growth has ceased, food and opportunity are much more equally distributed, war is considered absolutely unacceptable regardless of the provocation (except in truly necessary self-defense), and virtually no nuclear or biological or chemical weapons remain in existence.
The net inheritance of the next generation or two, taking into account all the positive and negative things that you leave for them, must be at least equal to what your generation inherited from your forebears. You must play fair with us, not shortchange us. You must give us equal opportunity.
Conceptually, “equal opportunity for future generations” is a reasonably precise concept. Although it is not easy to apply this concept with exquisite precision, it is easy to apply it as an approximate guideline. It is easy to identify historical periods that violated this concept. Looking back at various eras in human history, we can generally agree that the legacies of certain eras of exploration and innovation were highly positive, whereas other eras of warfare and repression left the next generation much worse off than their forebears.
Certain things that you do in your era can greatly affect the next few generations for better or worse. We hope that you will emphasize getting safely through the next few decades without hurting humanity’s chances for the decades beyond that. You should avoid major depletions and debts that will unduly harm the opportunities of the next few generations. Compare your behavior in your personal life: if you do not fix a leaky roof and keep your financial debts in line with your income, you eventually pay a high price for not thinking enough about the future. Your thriving is based on resources, knowledge, and institutions left for you by previous generations; it is only fair that you in turn bequeath an adequate base to future generations.
You are faced with many needs and problems and goals, just as we are. But they must be managed within the overriding principle that you should not mortgage or discount the future. You should not give future generations fewer opportunities and resources than you have had. You may be tempted to solve your problems by stealing from those of us who will live after you do, but such behavior is unfair, unacceptable, and shortsighted. Please do not let your short-term goals jeopardize our chances of having a healthy planet and sufficient happiness. Our flourishing is just as important as yours. A society, like an individual, must resist the urge to live only for the moment and to consume everything in sight regardless of future consequences.
Equal opportunity for future generations is the minimum level for which you should strive, just as it is the minimum level for which we strive. In addition, if you could manage to do so, it would be nice if you could make us even better off than you are. Giving us opportunities and resources superior to those of your own generation would be a worthy goal. Although some generations before yours aimed at continuing “progress” as their goal, a more realistic goal for your generation is simply to hold your own. You are finding that hunger, local wars, guerilla and terrorist attacks, crime, pollution, population growth, toxic and nuclear wastes, and environmental degradation are tougher problems than you anticipated. In many of those struggles, you are slipping backwards rather than gaining ground. As you face what has actually happened during the past few years, you feel less optimistic about the ideal of bequeathing to the next few generations a better world than you yourselves inherited. Instead, it is appropriate to put much of your effort into avoiding the worst catastrophes and into giving the next few generations an opportunity equal to yours. An appropriate goal is to bequeath to them a civilization and a planet that are better in some ways but unfortunately worse in other ways. Justice requires that you not make your successors worse off. But it does not require you to make them better off.
Meaning and purpose
Commitment to humanity’s ongoing flourishing (our core value) can enhance the sense of meaning and purpose for individuals and society. Because caring about future generations is such a grand transcendent context, it provides a larger sense of meaning and purpose than daily activities alone can provide.
For most people in most epochs, daily life provides a major portion of their meaning and purpose. Caring about the continuous stream of humanity does not replace or reduce the meaning gained from daily life, but instead it provides additional or enlarged meaning.
It is quite natural and appropriate for most people to gain a large amount of meaning and purpose from their daily life. Within daily life, the sources of meaning can include relationships, work, goals, helping people, learning, self-betterment, religious activities, spiritual experiences, the search for truth, and enjoyable leisure-time activities.
In your era and ours, many people also gain meaning and purpose from nature and wilderness. They feel connected with the natural world and feel fortunate to be living on such a delightful planet. They enjoy and treasure the diversity of plant and animal life. They appreciate mountains, oceans, deserts, sunsets, and the seasons. They farm, garden, travel, hike, camp, watch birds, feel close to pets or livestock, and admire the intricacy and beauty of nature. They feel integrated and connected with nature, not separate and detached.
In addition to all of this, individuals and societies can gain meaning and purpose from feeling part of the everlasting flow of human history. You can feel deeply connected to all the past, present, and future people who are part of this flow. This deep connectedness to past and future generations can satisfy the universal human yearning to be connected with something greater than self, something that transcends daily life. You can treasure your part in an unfolding adventure that sweeps from the remote past through the present and onward to a distant future. This unfolding drama encompasses all cultures spread over the entire planet. Being alive at a particularly exciting and critical point in human history, as you are, can enhance the meaning that you gain from this great adventure. Additional enhancement can come from the deep emotions–hopes, fears, exhilaration, joy, grief, anger–that you may experience as you contemplate the panorama of potential futures for your society, ranging from extinction to utopia.
In all periods of history, some people and societies gain additional meaning and purpose from their efforts to contribute to the continuing flow of history. Not content merely to be swept along as spectators, they actively participate in building a positive future for one community, one group, one region, or all of humanity. They feel a strong commitment to this as a core value. They align themselves with the ideas, movements, causes, and forces that are especially likely to lead to a reasonably positive human future. They oppose destructive, harmful, evil forces. Emphasizing cooperation, goodwill, and harmony, they are considerate of future generations as well as the people with whom they interact day by day. They care deeply about the long-term future of their community and culture. Their caring and commitment provide them with a heroic and challenging mission of transcendent significance. A goal so worthy that it provides a sense of cosmic purpose. A project so sweeping in its grandeur that it pervades and enlivens all aspects of life.
Few other challenges are as important and exhilarating! And few other goals and activities, even if they focus directly on your own happiness and well-being, can produce such a deep feeling of connectedness and joy.
A Foundation for moral and ethical choices
Your deep caring about the next two or three generations can provide an excellent foundation for your moral and ethical choices. Whenever individuals, families, organizations, and governments face such choices, they can be guided largely by what is best for the continued flourishing of human culture and civilization. This core value can serve as the heart of a global ethic as well as personal moral choices. This can lead in turn to actual behavior that is beneficial to all of us who will be alive in your future.
We hope you will develop ethical and moral principles, norms, and laws based on what is most beneficial for the continued flourishing of human civilization over the next few decades and beyond. And we hope you will take these principles very seriously in all debates, decisions, and public controversies–including nuclear and biological weapons, terrorism, war, crime, taxation, government debt, population size, birth control, environment, euthanasia, thoughtful suicide, and research to prolong the life span.
If humanity’s continued thriving is your core value, then the needs of future generations become part of your own self-interest rather than something separate or opposing. You are guided by their needs because you care about them, not just because of some abstract moral principle. Your “greed and selfishness” become transformed into altruism because what you want most of all is to be part of a society that is thriving now and that will continue to thrive. You are eager to build a world that will still be in good shape for your children and their children. The common distinction between selfish and altruistic desires disappears when your core value is humanity’s continued flourishing.
Our place within your religions
Your new and emerging religions, as well as your long-established religions, give you many benefits. The religious landscape will change dramatically in the years to come, of course, but the quest for religious and spiritual meaning will continue into the distant future. If you learn to incorporate the core value of caring about future generations into your spiritual quest, humankind will benefit greatly.
Each religion can encourage people to serve humanity, the planet, and the universe. Each religion can celebrate those who provide service to future generations through their contributions to the continuing improvement of human culture, knowledge, altruism, and environment. Each religion can inspire and support people in their efforts to build a positive long-term future for humanity.
Attention to the voices and needs of future generations, along with support for each person who wants to work on their behalf, could become a significant part of all religions. Religious services could incorporate music, poetry, readings, sermons, art, worship, and prayer that focus on the ongoing stream of humanity’s accomplishments. These accomplishments include compassion, altruism, insights, ideas, art, social inventions, technology, and productivity. And it is also appropriate, of course, to revere or worship the incredibly vast, wonderful, awe-inspiring universe in which we live. All of this, along with the potential for further creativity in the years to come, could be celebrated in worship, hymns, dance, and inner reflection.
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Chapter 3
A COSMOS FILLED WITH LIFE
The Galactic Code prohibits any sort of interference in the natural development of any society in the galaxy. This prohibition also applies to us, the people who are alive long after your era, when we are sending a message back to you. Because we live in your future, we are capable of telling you many details about your future. But we are not allowed to do so, because these details might interfere with the natural development of human society.