The distant future, millions of years away, is closer than ever. Supporters of so-called ‘long-termism’ believe that the interests of the many billions of people who will still live should already determine policy decisions and politics. Their interests may even outweigh ours now. It is a movement that has mainly emerged in the US in recent years has become popularalso among billionaires and CEOs.
The American one philosopher Samuel Scheffler, who recently gave a lecture at TU Delft, sympathizes with the use of that thinking, but also has major objections to it. Weighing future happiness against that of current humanity leads to “very interesting puzzles about which you can write endless dissertations,” but, according to Scheffler, ignores the reason that people really take the future into account: their “love for humanity as a constant project”. He also recognizes this in the fascination with the Apocalypse in climate activism and popular culture.
Can apocalyptic thinking mobilize for the future? Take the German action group that consciously calls itself ‘the last generation’?
“I assume that name is meant as a self-refuting prediction. How effective such an approach is is an empirical question. I have my doubts about it. It can mobilize, but it can also lead to people turning away from it and returning to the order of the day. Because it’s too extreme. In films and literature, I find the apocalyptic theme interesting, because it is an expression of people’s fear of the future.”
What do you have against long-termism?
“I agree with long-termists that it is wise to think about the long term. Who wouldn’t think that’s wise? (laughs) Only, I disagree with the argument they give for the sake of the future. This emerged from the school of effective altruism, which has a strong utilitarian orientation. It’s about calculating maximum happiness for a maximum number of future people. They say: there can still be trillions of people alive who will produce a lot of happiness and value. That is the interest we have in the future.”
So purely quantitative?
“Yes, it makes an aggregate of everyone who will live in the future. I don’t think that premise of maximum human happiness over billions of years is the most compelling way to think about the future. First of all, you’re talking about people who don’t exist yet, so why does their number even matter? And it has practical implications: long-termists believe that we should give much more priority to long-term threats and be willing to ignore any current problems to do so. That is the consequence of their utilitarianism: there are only a few billion of humanity today, so their interests pale in comparison to those of all future generations. I think that is a wrong way to think about the future.”
How should we orient ourselves towards the future?
“People, at least most of them, do not see themselves as abstract actors who have to take care of future universes, as you encounter in long-termism. We think of ourselves as concrete beings who are already connected to the past and future. We have ancestors, we are born in a certain culture and time, we are taught all kinds of things – whether we like it or not. And we always anticipate the future, the survival of humanity. Also implicit. Why am I writing a philosophical article? If tomorrow no one will read it because humanity will be extinct, then I’ll stop. Many of our activities derive at least part of their value from the unspoken expectation that the world and humanity will continue to exist.”
Our ‘historical sensibility’.
“Yes, we see ourselves as part of a chain of generations. That realization was very clear in traditional society, much less so now. But it’s still there. This is not just a concern for your immediate family, your own society or culture. We are included in the ‘project of humanity’, as I call it. We would be deeply saddened if that were to cease to exist tomorrow. That is why we worry about the future, not because we want to maximize the happiness of as many people as possible in a million years.”
Is that an empirical observation or a philosophical one?
“I could be wrong about most people, in that respect it is an empirical matter. But I can’t imagine a society where people don’t care about the future. By the way, I don’t mean ‘humanity’ biologically, Homo sapiens, or as a historical reservoir of high-cultural achievement. I’m talking about humans as a life form. We love our creativity, curiosity, sociability, humor.”
Despite all the misery?
“Well, I often get that question: who are you kidding with that ‘love for humanity’? Look around you: war, murder. But what I mean is that even in the midst of that misery, we have the wish that humanity will continue to exist.”
Your approach has been criticized like some kind of pyramid scheme. You make meaning for humanity dependent on new generations, so that it is never realized. The result is that in the last generation that will ever come, everything appears to have been meaningless with retroactive effect.
“It’s a smart argument, but I’m not blown away by it. In Annie Hall Woody Allen comes to the psychiatrist as a 9-year-old, he doesn’t want to do homework because the world will end in billions of years (laughs). One might object that a meaningful life does not require humanity to exist forever, but it does require it to exist for a considerable period of time. You could also say that we are historically short-sighted. We kick the can down the street, expecting others to kick it further. We never know how far, but that doesn’t matter.”
You speak of unbearable sadness that would overtake us at the news that humanity would become extinct tomorrow. On the other hand, the fact that the world continues after your death without you can also be sad, right?
“What it comes down to is that you want the party to continue, only with you. Not that it stops. That agrees with my argument. Imagine if we said to such a person: okay, then we will kill the rest of humanity the moment you die. Would that make him feel better? I do not think so.”