CURRENTLY, society does little to care for its future. In my new book, What We Owe the Future, I make the case for : the view that we should be doing much more to protect the interests of generations to come. Longtermism puts the needs of our children and grandchildren front and centre in our moral thinking, and takes seriously the sheer scale of the future that may be ahead of us.
Why should we look so far ahead? The is grounded in three key ideas.
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The first is that future people matter. The moral worth of someone鈥檚 life isn鈥檛 diminished merely by being born 100 years from now. Imagine that, while hiking, I drop a glass bottle on the trail. If I don鈥檛 clear it up, a child will cut herself badly on the glass shards. Should I care less about her pain if that child happens to step on the glass in a week, or a decade, or a century? Of course not. Pain and suffering matter, whenever they occur.
The second key concept is that there may be a lot of future people. If humanity lasts as long as a typical mammal species, then future generations may well outnumber us 10,000 to 1. This means we are probably at the very beginning of history. It is likely that the vast majority of people 鈥� real people, who are capable of joy and suffering just like us 鈥� are yet to come.
The third idea is that we can to improve the lives of future people.
You might be sceptical. It is difficult to predict how our actions will affect our own lives in 10 years, let alone all of humanity in 1000 years. But it would be too pessimistic to throw our hands in the air and say there is nothing we can do to be excellent ancestors. For one, we can fight to reduce the risk of extinction or societal collapse, which could prevent future generations from ever seeing the light of day.
In his book , my colleague Toby Ord estimates that there is a 1 in 6 chance of human extinction, or another event that permanently destroys humanity鈥檚 potential, this century. The risk comes from threats like runaway artificial intelligence, pandemics and nuclear weapons. We need to act urgently to , and pandemic preparedness and .
What鈥檚 more, we can promote values that treat the interests of all people, including future people, with respect and care. Some of the greatest contributions to human welfare in the 20th century were from the feminist and civil rights movements. These expanded the scope of society鈥檚 moral concern, in order to protect the dignity and interests of women and minority groups. But the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century shows that values can take a sharp turn for the worse. Without dedicated activism and careful stewardship, there is no guarantee that the arc of history will keep bending towards justice.
There are many ways in which the years to come could go terribly. But a dystopian future is far from inevitable. If we play our cards right, we can give future generations a more flourishing world 鈥� one without hunger, poverty, racism, discrimination, mistreatment of animals and so many other evils of the present day.
How might those future generations look back at us? Carl Sagan suggested an answer: 鈥淭hey will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way.鈥�
There is no assurance that we will find our way. But improving the world for future generations is one of humanity鈥檚 most pressing tasks, and it urgently demands our attention.
William MacAskill is a philosopher at the University of Oxford and author of
