The Era of ‘The Now Generation’ Must End
By Edwin L. Young, PhD
November 10, 2009
What will the earth and its species be like in one billion years from now? How about a million years from now? A thousand? One hundred? Ten? One year from now?
You do not know. Consider this. What if what the earth and its species will be like in a billion years from now may depend on what global humanity plans, decides, and does this year? What if each person, today, decides that they must wrestle with this question and tries to make as well-informed judgment as they can about how they must direct their actions so as to pave the way for the survival of the earth and its species for next year and for a billion years to come.
Living in ‘The Now’, there is no thousand, million, billion years ‘from NOW’. What will it take to transform global humanity so that all people live in ‘The Now’ as though it determines not just the quality of life but also the very existence, the very survival, of countless billions of humans, countless billions of species, and nature itself for, hopefully, billions of years to come?
Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperatives (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative) are:
1. Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
2. Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end.
3. Therefore, every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends.
Whom do you know that thinks this way? Do children think, much less act this way? If Kant’s Categorical Imperatives were to be the model for moral instruction, then who in our modern world would deliver this moral instruction? In a culture of extreme, de facto moral relativism, to whom would they look for guidance; how could they arrive at a maxim that should become universal law? Would that be our religious leaders, our political leaders, our educators, our parents, our business executives? Where on our planet would one find a Kantian universal kingdom of ends in effect? Suppose someone adequately had been given such moral instruction and was actively practicing it to the best of their ability, would they not be in dire, if not mortal, conflict with the moral Zeitgeist of America? Of what consequence for the earth and its species would that one Kantian, morally ideal person, be? Of what consequence would they be for anyone besides themselves, in the present, or, moreover, for the near and distant future of the earth and its species? How long would that morally ideal person last if they worked in today corporate industrial, financial, military, political, and, for that matter, even religious world?
Being inundated with our culture’s near universal, de facto, maxim to use other people as means to one’s own personal ends. We must understand that this maxim extends, equally; to one’s team’s ends; corporations’ ends; one’s political party’s ends; the nation’s ends; and the nation’s military’s ends. We must understand that Kant’s moral universalism has the same status as a ghost with respect to its relevance to life in America. We must understand that the dreadful state of affairs, which has all of us being oriented to the short-term or immediate future, is a prescription for universal mortality.
I emphatically must state an unequivocal ‘NO’ to both the Kantian ethical imperatives and to the American “Now” generation and its ubiquitously shallow ethos or mores, or should I say its variegated banal, cognitively vacant, ethical practices. Even our corporately controlled, servile media makes time for clips of hand wringing over the economic woes of the US and for fretful snippets foreshadowing our rapidly oncoming planetary environmental disaster. Concerning the future of the earth and its species, the issues are far too complex and the people far too uneducated for us to go further into the future armed only with the maxim to live in ‘The Now’. Our collective future is in too great jeopardy for us to rely on our people’s pervasive acceptance of the implicit dictum that success, defined as wealth, power, and status or rank accompanied by maximum pride and pleasure, is all the individual need concern themselves with. So far, our leaders of every genre have been by far too successful in programming the minds of pupils and students, corporate employees, bureaucrats, soldiers, believers, political party members, and members of all, I say all, of our organizations to go along with their codes, their mandates, their orders, and assignments.
Our population has been programmed to be ‘for’ themselves in ‘The Now’. The biblical saying about being ‘My brother’s keeper’ is ridiculed as being for sissies and losers and not for winners, nor for the celebrated American superman, superman including superwoman or wonder woman. Even the ruthless, intimidating crime lord receives more adulation than the weenie, girly, gentle good-guy. Who in our culture that is faced with knowing they should be a whistle-blower will not tremble in fear for their job, no rather for the life, even knowing their decision could be and most likely is a matter of life and death for many others. However, what we have here is an issue that is colossal in comparison with the dilemma of a single whistle-blower.
We are faced with a decision that has no alternatives. We must decide to transform our culture into one where all assume that they are their ‘global brothers’ keepers’. We must, or else be the cause of our planet’s demise, transform our culture into one that regards ‘The Now’ as of trifling importance and replace it with a dedication to the long-term survival of nature and all of the planet’s species. With must decide to begin to learn what ethical maturity in this complex, modern, global world and then learn how to teach it to every youth growing up in our nation. We equally must devote ourselves to encouraging the nations of the world to do likewise, not for our nation’s sake but for the sake of all for now and forevermore.
The era of ‘The Now Generation’ must end NOW!