Future Generations Condemning Us

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/24/AR2010092404113.html?referrer=emailarticle

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"Of all the virtues, gratitude is probably the most neglected and least expressed."
(John C. Maxwell)

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Sunday's Washington Post had an interesting input from Kwame Anthony Appiah asking what future generations will condemn us for. His article was made that much more interesting by the added option of giving readers a "choice" to vote for four alternatives. In the 24 hours since my vote went in, 2,000 more people have voted. Cast your vote!

Overall, Appiah suggests that there are three signs that a particular practice is destined for future condemnation. First, people have already heard the arguments against the practice ("The case against slavery didn't emerge in a blinding moment of moral clarity, for instance; it had been around for centuries."). Second, defenders of the custom tend not to offer moral counterarguments but instead invoke tradition, human nature or necessity (As in, "We've always had slaves, and how could we grow cotton without them?"). And third, supporters engage in what one might call strategic ignorance, avoiding truths that might force them to face the evils in which they are complicit ("Those who ate the sugar or wore the cotton that the slaves grew simply didn't think about what made those goods possible.").

No matter how much we think we know about the various issues going on in the world, we can't know about all of them. Appiah calls our attention to the Russian Republic of Kalmykia where satellite photos show a "... vast expanse of parched wasteland that decades earlier was a lush and verdant landscape ... recognized in the 1990s as Europe's first man-made desert." Desertification, which is primarily the result of destructive land-management practices, threatens a third of the earth's surface.

It's good to have a philosophy professor like Appiah remind us occasionally that part of our worldwide decision-making process should be based on what we are leaving for future generations to deal with, cope with or stand for.