What future generations can do for us

On Intergenerational Fairness Day in 2024, Vidya K, Giridharan and Michael Münker of milliongenerations.org in the Netherlands reflect on what future generations can do for us (similar to blogpost on the blog of the Intergenerational Foundation

---

What future generations can do for us

In September 2024, the United Nations (UN) adopted a Declaration on Future Generations. Like human rights, future generations is an ambitious grand idea. Caring for those who do not yet exist, however, is difficult.

Why should I care about future generations? What have they ever done for me?

The quip, or a variant referring to posterity, is often attributed to Groucho Marx. It has been used by philosopher John Stuart Mill in a speech to Parliament in 1866 and can probably be traced to the early 1700s.

In his speech, John Stuart Mill explained that posterity has already done a lot for us, including everything anyone ever did in order to be remembered. (Please let the authors know of examples in science or culture for which this motive can be ruled out.) In 2012, Samuel Scheffler argued convincingly that much of what we value in life depends on the implicit assumption that life will continue long after our own death. While we often superficially entertain the idea of an end of the world or use it in arguments, much of our life would lose its meaning if nothing could continue. We implicitly take future generations for granted and would be non-functional if we knew there would be none. In short, future generations are essential for our well-being, we owe them just about everything. And yet there is more.

One of the main ways to explain Fermi’s paradox – why we see no evidence of alien civilizations despite the great number of opportunities in the universe – is that progress is difficult to survive so that civilizations don’t last very long. Nuclear weapons show that humanity can mount a credible threat to its own existence. Progress continues. Future inventions might become even more dangerous. Recent developments, for example in artificial intelligence and biology, suggest more plausible ways in which progress could go terribly wrong. Yet progress also allows so many of us to exist and it enables an ever-increasing share of this growing population to lead ever longer and better lives. Progress is good, for as long as you survive it.

To have a long future, any civilisation needs to find ways to survive its progress. We can only do that together. Competition is an extremely powerful mechanism: evolution led to the species that exist. Where powers grow to provide the ability to self-destruct, however, a long future requires defence to somehow become stronger than offence in all regards. Collaboration and caution are needed until that is achieved, and possibly to achieve it. Competition makes progress self limiting.

Yet in many places, trends towards more collaboration have stagnated or reversed. Despite most of us leading every longer and better lives, a sense of competition and threat seems to increase. Polarisation grows and conflicts spread.

Collaboration is difficult, but in the long run is our only viable way forward. Hollywood has depicted attacks by aliens as a way to bury our rivalries and find motivation to collaborate. Such an external event, however, seems extremely unlikely and hardly a viable path to long-term survival. Barring an act of God or a miraculously benevolent artificial intelligence taking control, we will have to get our act together ourselves. We must and we need to try.

For lack of aliens, future generations can be the third party to help us bridge our differences and focus on reducing the risks endangering a long future. They remind us that despite diverse appearances and ways of being, there is only one kind of human on this planet and that being alive is an immense and unlikely priviledge. Regardless of backgrounds or opinions, we all want and need future generations to exist. Future generations can help to reduce polarization, increase collaboration and make it more likely that humanity survives progress.

Success is not ensured. But attention for future generations is growing, laws to protect them and institutions to represent them are being created. These efforts must be strengthened. At the UN Summit of the Future in September, Kim Stanley Robinson read from The Ministry for the Future. To support the UN Declaration on Future Generations, the co-facilitators who had helped negotiate it, the representatives of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and Jamaica, organised an exhibit at the UN in New York Good Ancestors: Art and Culture for Future Generations.

Good Ancestor exhibit on the round wall © Chantal Heijnen

September 16th through 27th, 2024, during UNGA and the Summit of the Future, 17 large panels hung on the round wall of the UN General Assembly building next to the paintings of past Secretary-Generals. The exhibit had been prepared by people from 23 countries, including the authors.

A strikingly modern handwave from 10,000-year-old imprints in a cave in Argentina underscores our common humanity and its endurance over time. A Jamaican artist looks at the future and alternate realities through a Black cultural lens. A forest in Norway is growing paper for books that can’t be read before 2114. Thousands of artworks from 55 African countries are combined every four years to build towards 2063. One block is placed every 10 years to eventually create a pyramid of 120 blocks. The outlines of a horse carved into grassy hills have been maintained for 3,000 years. A clock to keep accurate time for ten millennia is nearing completion. An Indian artist reflects on how the ocean lastingly shapes civilisations. A musical composition has been playing for one generation to continue for 39 more and then repeat. An Amazonian photographer highlights the inheritances indigenous communities pass on for their descendants. The slowest concert shall be heard until 2640. A Caribbean photographer reveals the interconnectedness of all beings. Future design councils spread from Japan to improve decisions. Fungi transformed the earth to make way for the evolution of many complex life forms. A poem is carved into the streets one letter every Saturday to increase the number of Saturdays. (It also shows how the wish to be remembered can fund a social sculpture that even donates to charities.) Next to the final panel was a post-box: visitors were asked what they want to leave behind for far future generations. Answers will be integrated in a new artwork and be stored for a million years.

Michael Munker of milliongenerations speaking at the opening reception for the Good Ancestor exhibition in the UN General Assembly building in September 2024 - photo credit Chantal Heijnen

What unites these examples is the belief that future generations matter. The important thing about being remembered is that there is someone who can remember. The reactions to the exhibit in New York showed that such art can inspire and reach different people on different levels. These long-term art projects must continue, and more like them are needed.

Artists and creatives can come up with novel perspectives on our relationship with future generations and make them tangible. The United Nations should invite artists to reflect on these themes for its review of the implementation of the Declaration on Future Generations in 2028. Other venues should, too. Many circumstances would benefit from long views, especially those of short-sightedness and conflict. Future generations can bring us together, foster a mind-shift, add a novel voice in political developments and help us survive progress. Nothing is more important than their existence.