HUMAN EXTINCTION AND THE VALUE OF OUR EFFORTS

BROOKE ALAN TRISEL

THE PHILOSOPHICAL FORUM Volume XXXV, No. 3, Fall 2004

Discussions about nuclear weapons, the depletion of the ozone layer, and the possibility that a massive asteroid could crash into Earth, prompt us to reflect on our own individual mortality and on human extinction. And when we think about the end of humanity, it raises questions about whether our efforts have value because, if human extinction does occur, the things that we have created will decay and eventually vanish. Some claim that our efforts are pointless if humanity will cease to exist. This claim will be examined and disputed in this essay.

In recent years, there has been extensive debate regarding the question of whether we have obligations to future generations, such as an obligation to pre- serve the environment. To a far lesser extent, there has also been discussion about the more basic question of whether it matters how long humanity will persist. The related question of whether our efforts have value if humanity will end has received even less attention.

The human species could become extinct abruptly, with all of us dying at once or within a short time of each other. Extinction could also occur gradually. For example, if people would immediately stop having children, then we would live out our lives in a world without future generations. Humanity would become extinct over a period of 110 to 120 years—the maximum life span of someone currently alive.

If we knew that humanity would become extinct within the next few months, then we would be justified in feeling distressed about this because it would cut short our expected life span, thereby depriving us of many potential experiences. However, should we feel anguish about the possibility that humankind will become extinct long after we and our loved ones have died?

I would like to thank an anonymous referee for valuable comments and suggestions.

It is understandable why we want those that we love, including our children and friends, to continue living after we have died. Because we love them, relate to them as one existent individual to another, and empathize with their feelings and aspira- tions, we desire for them to live on so that they can realize their goals and experience fulfilling lives. But why should it matter whether remote future generations— faceless, abstract persons who only potentially exist and whom we will never know—will be born after we have died and will persist for as long as possible?

Ernest Partridge contends that people have a “basic need” to care for the future beyond their own lifetimes, a need that he refers to as “self transcendence.”1 He writes:

By claiming that there is a basic human need for “self transcendence,” I am proposing that, as a result of the psychodevelopmental sources of the self and the fundamental dynamics of social expe- rience, well-functioning human beings identify with, and seek to further, the well-being, preser- vation, and endurance of communities, locations, causes, artifacts, institutions, ideals, and so on, that are outside themselves and that they hope will flourish beyond their own lifetimes.2

In attempting to support his claim, Partridge argues that there is a “desire to extend the term of one’s influence and significance well beyond the term of one’s lifetime—a desire evident in arrangements for posthumous publications, in bequests and wills, in perpetual trusts (such as the Nobel Prize), and so forth.”3

Partridge concludes by asserting:

To be sure, posterity does not actually exist now. Even so, in a strangely abstract and metaphori- cal sense, posterity may extend profound favors for the living. For posterity exists as an idea, a potentiality, and a valid object of transpersonal devotion, concern, purpose, and commitment. Without this idea and potentiality, our lives would be confined, empty, bleak, pointless, and morally impoverished.4

Allen Tough makes a similar argument to Partridge when he states: “If our future is highly negative [referring to the end of humanity], then most other values and goals will lose their point.”5

In this essay, an attempt will be made to demonstrate that the claim that our lives would be empty and pointless without future generations is greatly exag-

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1 Partridge uses the term “self transcendence” to mean extending one’s influence beyond one’s life- time. Others use this word in a broader sense to mean extending one’s influence or help to other people, regardless of whether they are future persons and so, to avoid confusion, this word will not be used.

2 Ernest Partridge, “Why Care About the Future?” in Responsibilities to Future Generations: Environmental Ethics, ed. Ernest Partridge (Buffalo: Promet