Why Worry About Future Generations? (Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics)

by Samuel Scheffler

Even though I have not suggested that this form of love is universal, but only that it is very widespread, it may seem that in order to refute the suggestion one has only to read the newspaper: any newspaper, anywhere in the world, on any given day. The ongoing record of human savagery, brutality, and violence is so overwhelming, and these tendencies of human behavior manifest themselves with such depressing frequency and on such a staggering scale, that one would have to be mad to propose that a love of humanity is a significant feature of human psychology. Yet the prevalence of human savagery does not undermine the reality of human love, any more than the prevalence of cruelty undermines the reality of kindness or the prevalence of greed undermines the reality of generosity. In suggesting that many people would react to the prospect of imminent human extinction with sadness and even despair, and that these attitudes reveal a form of concern that might best be described as a love of humanity, I am not suggesting that this concern is our only concern or our strongest concern or a concern that coheres smoothly with every other aspect of our psychologies.