“We are Robbing Posterity to Live Today.”
I am at the Aspen Institute to attend a Socrates Society seminar this President’s weekend, and the headline for this post is a quote by Zeke Emanuel, Chair of the Department of Bioethics at The Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health, who is moderating a session on "Resolving Bioethical Dilemmas" (believe it or not, his session is exclusively for teenagers– see Teen Socrates).
Zeke made this comment during our opening dinner panel discussion in the context of answering the following:
"What is a key question that you believe the next President of the United States should consider upon taking office?"
This simple statement is a profound and concise rendering of the American malady. Think about it– American society has devolved to the point where virtually everything we experience is driven by a lust for instant gratification– from the mainstreaming of pornography to celebrity-seeking reality TV shows; from hasty tax stimulus packages to hedge funds; from inscrutable financial derivatives to ignorant day traders.
The popular media is consumed with the NOW. The basic concept of long-term stewardship in public policy, of the obligation that we have as a society to bear responsibility for our children and their children, is a novelty. Many people debating the impact of accelerating rates of climate change on the future of the world are missing the point– it’s all about posterity. Have we truly forgotten that we are here on earth for something more than just our brief and individually insignificant moments of existence in time?
I come to the Aspen Institute, where I currently co-chair the Socrates Society Advisory Board with Laura Lauder, for the luxury of being able to learn, for the gift of being able to step outside the narrow hallway of thinking that governs my everyday business life. I come to the Aspen Institute to be able to hear truly insightful observations from brilliant people like Zeke Emanuel.
Tonight, 65 of us who are participating in four different seminars were fortunate to be able to hear other answers to this question from former CIA Director Jim Woolsey, senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations Isobel Coleman, former Republican congressman from Oklahoma Mickey Edwards, and Princeton University Professor of History Sean Wilentz.
Now what are we going to do to get more people who can impact the future to remember that posterity matters?
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- Plato, Contemporary Government, and the Aspen Institute
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2 Responses to ““We are Robbing Posterity to Live Today.””
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I am a venture capitalist focused on investing in Security, Cleantech, and Digital Media. I have a strong interest in public policy issues and advocate public-private collaboration to protect our nation's critical infrastructure.
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February 22nd, 2008 at 5:52 am
I enjoyed your post, Pascal, and appreciate the reminder you’ve given us about the critical importance of posterity, the “eternal perspective,” and spending God’s gift of time wisely.
60 minutes did an interesting piece recently called The Keys to Happiness, in which Morley Schafer interviews an Israeli soldier turned Harvard professor Tal Ben-Shahar (who teaches the most popular course at Harvard, Psych 1504, “Positive Phychology: The Science of Happiness,” known as “Happiness 101″ to the nearly 1000 students who take his course in the science of happiness). Professor Shahar agrees with you, as do I, that we Americans have taken our eye off the ball … unlike those in Denmark, for example, who have an entirely different focus on life, who are less driven, more contented, with time to remember what’s truly important, and what’s actually meaningful, fulfilling, and consistent with our purpose as human beings.
What indeed ARE we going to do to get Americans to break out of the collective hedonistic hypnosis that keeps us asleep to all but the most basic levels of reality? The odds seem to be drastically slanted against the success of such a project. We must remember that, nevertheless, miracles do happen … many times every day, in fact (pessimism, like consumerism, is another increasingly ubiquitous form of reality distortion afflicting American culture, these days).
At this point, I fear that real change may require a traumatic cultural shock, such is the magnitude of the problem; perhaps it will be an economic or environmental one, that finally succeeds (like the last Great Depression did) in getting us to recenter our priorities a bit. We may need to be forced into saving ourselves, so deep is the denial of the depth of our problem in this regard.
Thanks for reminding us of the need to put first things first.
(Links to articles: http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/140/happiness; http://harvardmagazine.com/2007/01/the-science-of-happiness.html)
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Thanks Chris for your thoughtful comment– your suggestion that real change may require a traumatic cultural shock is, in my view, on point. Our generation and, for those of you with teenage children, our children are rapidly approaching a ‘crucible’ for American society– it may come in one of many forms, but it IS coming– and from it we will generate a sense of purpose and the will to self-sacrifice that is so painfully absent from America today. Barack Obama has successfully tapped in to the alienation in our society in a positive way– let’s hope that he gets the chance to lead this country in a time where fresh, inspired, and positive leadership is so despertely needed.