Exactly how much should we care about future generations? It seems obviously wrong to say that we shouldn’t care about them at all. We would not be doing justice by them if we decided to just live it up and let them figure out how to deal with whatever mess we left behind on their own. It also seems wrong to say that we should care about them as much as we do about ourselves. After all, they don’t even exist—at least not yet. Future generations are merely hypothetical, and hypothetical beings surely do not matter as much as existing beings. Right?

It’s also worth noting that, in fact, it is entirely up to us whether these hypothetical future beings ever actually come into existence. It is also up to us in what numbers they come to exist is entirely up to us. We have it within our power to bring a lot of them into existence, or just a few of them into existence or even none of them at all. And in case this last thought shocks you, I should say that I am not advocating the extinction of humankind. I admit I can imagine someone (but not me) thinking, “Well, we humans have had our go at it. We’ve mostly just ruined the planet in the process. So maybe it’s time for us to exit the stage and leave the planet to others who will certainly do less damage and may even do some good.”

Myself, I’m just not enough of a misanthrope to give into that kind of thinking. I want to see the human adventure continue into the indefinite future. And I bet most other people do too. But if that’s right, we should act now on the assumption that there will be future generations. How numerous they will be is perhaps an open question. But that there will be generations to come seems all but assured.

那么，我们欠下一代什么呢?你可能会回答，既然我们一开始就不欠他们什么，我们不可能欠他们任何东西。但这种推理方式忽略了选择是有后果的这一点。Maybe my parents didn’towe比如，让我自己存在。但一旦他们决定要孩子，他们就不能随意挥霍所有的资源了。

To be sure, that still leaves open the question of exactly how much of their resources my parents were obligated to save for their future child (who turned out to be, but was not guaranteed to be, me.) Maybe they shouldn’t have wasted money on a yacht—which luckily for me they didn’t—but should I, as their future child, really begrudge their having taken evening classes or having gone to the theatre—things that would contribute to their own happiness and flourishing?I want to say, probably not. But surely if they had been so profligate that they made the future me permanently worse off, wouldn’t I have had the right to be retrospectively pissed at them for having done such a terrible harm to me? Similarly, if we don’t take care of the planet now, won’t the future generations that will someday inherit it have the right to look back at us and be pissed off at us too?

但是，想想这个有趣的哲学转折。假设我的父母因为害怕他们生下我而根本没有要孩子，而这种担心最终会成为我未来的义愤。我不能说我会更喜欢那样。事实上，我就不会到处抱怨了，不是吗?实际上，我非常感激他们没有那样推理，采取了那种懦弱的方式。

Now the very fact that I am tempted to feel grateful to my parents for not letting fear hold them back from having me suggests that maybe it’s not myparentswho owed something to the futureme, but it’smewho owesthem感谢他们慷慨地生下了我。也许作为未来的父母，他们没有特别的责任为未来的孩子存钱。也许，相反，我们应该把决定要孩子的行为，甚至在孩子还未受孕之前就为之做出牺牲，诸如此类的行为，视为前瞻性的慈善行为!所以，也许，仅仅是也许，从责任和义务的角度来看待我们与未来人民的关系是一个错误。

但我内心有个很小的声音说:“等一下。没有那么快。假如我们现在就在这里，完全糟蹋了这个星球呢?未来的人们难道没有权利回头看看我们并问:‘既然你们掠夺了我们的星球，为什么还要费心让我们存在呢?’”

But I reply to the small voice, “But in that case, why couldn’t we say to them ‘So you would rather not exist?’”And then the still small voice replies, “And what if they said back to us, ‘Under these conditions, wewouldrather not exist! So we’re suing you past people for wrongful existence in the court of intergenerational justice!’”

But now haven’t we shown that not only do we not have any positive obligations to them—since it’s all a matter of forward directed charity, anyway—but maybe we might actually have an obligationnotto bring future people into existence, at least if we’re going to mess things up enough to make their hypothetical lives unbearable.

“Wait, that’s not what I was getting at all,” the still small voice insists. “What, I was trying to get you to see is that we have an absolute duty to future generations not toruin他们未来的地球。”

但是，你看，即使你是对的，仍然很小的声音，给他们留下一个完全毁灭的星球和给他们留下一个有点磨损的星球，你知道——一个被“慈爱地使用”的星球，不是有很大的区别吗?The real question is howmuch为了子孙后代，我们应该做出牺牲。我们应该像僧侣一样生活，让他们过上富足的生活吗?

That certainly can’t be the right asnwer. That would imply that future people countmorethan us. And who thinks that? Certainly not me. I’m not even sure they count thesame随着美国。那我们只有一个选择。I hate to say it, but future people surely countlessthan we do—at least alittleless. But that's not surprising, is it? I meanwehave real, concrete, and urgent interests. Think of today's teeming masses, displaced by violence and climate change, wandering the world in search for a safe harbor. In comparison to all that present day concrete suffering, the hypothetical suffering of hypothetical future people seems sort of distant and abstract.

在你攻击我，说这只是一种以现在为中心的态度，解释了我们在气候变化等问题上缺乏行动之前，我应该说，我实际上是完全支持应对气候变化的。我完全赞成在权衡当前人民的利益和未来人民的利益时采取行动。我只是不认为我们应该在多大程度上考虑假想未来人类的幸福而不是我们自己的幸福。

Maybe you have a thought or two of your own though. So listen to the episode, join the conversation, and help us think through how much we owe to future generations.

Photo byMarkus SpiskeonUnsplash