I recently had an opportunity to visit Paris. Late November is not a prime sightseeing season for Paris, but sightseeing was not the purpose of my visit. I went to attend a philosophy session at the Café des Phares.
The late Marc Sautet, a French writer, teacher and contemporary philosopher, introduced the Café Philo concept in 1992. Sautet maintained that philosophical debates in the Socratic tradition should not be limited to professors lecturing students in classrooms; rather they should engage ordinary citizens gathered in a public place. Thus, Sautet created a modern-day agora for freewheeling discussion of a philosophical nature on a topic proposed by participants themselves at the outset of each debate.
I spent hours after the Café Philo walking the streets of the Marais and the Left Bank in Paris, and, influenced by the experience, everything I looked at induced questions. I stopped to contemplate the achievements of architects and builders whose names were foreign to me but whose accomplishments have endured for centuries. I reflected on the legacy of earlier generations as I walked along streets, squares, and parks named in the memory of and to honour and respect writers, poets, composers, philosophers, doctors, and others citizens who, in centuries past, made social and cultural contributions that enrich our lives today. Who we are and what we have rests on foundations built by earlier generations. What will we ourselves leave for future generations?
Could Rousseau, writing in the late 1700s, have imagined the 21st century and that his thoughts would endure as a framework for democratic politics? How about Beethoven? Could he have imagined that people would still be in awe of his music a quarter of a millennium after his death? How about the hundreds of masons and carpenters and labourers who, in 1163, started to build the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris? Could they have imagined that it would take more than 180 years to complete the project they had started? Could they have imagined that their achievement would survive and after 800 years, through untold wars and revolutions, serve as a celebrated place of worship and a proud national treasure?
After hours of indulging in philosophical reflections on centuries past I turned my thoughts to the future. What lies ahead for humanity? We face the real possibility of unprecedented melting of polar ice and of glaciers in the century ahead. The consequences, we are warned, will flood millions if not billions of people out of their homes. We face the possibility of the extinction of mammals, fish, birds, and insects on an unprecedented scale. We consume the riches of the earth, below, on, and above the ground, at a rate faster than the earth’s capacity to replenish them. But in spite of our knowledge and of ever more urgent warnings, we remain determined to enjoy our good and wasteful lives now and for as long as we possibly can. When we look to the future, we do so in terms of a few years or maybe a decade or two. Yet, if my grandchildren live as long as my grandmother did, they will see the 22nd century. Don’t I owe it to them to look and think beyond the 21st century and act accordingly?
When we look back at humanity’s achievements, we measure time in centuries. We know what a century is. But when we look ahead, we seem incapable of making the effort to create something, anything, with which to enrich future generations, to endure and to benefit humanity in the broadest sense of the word. The economy dominates our lives and our politics. We measure success in three-month intervals. We reward political promises that enrich us individually and immediately without much thought about the cost future generations will have to pay for our indulgences and comforts. We are the beneficiaries of humanity’s wisdom from centuries past. Why are we incapable of considering humanity in the 22nd, 23rd, 25th, or 30th centuries?
Untold past generations have contributed to future generations without raping the planet of that which sustains all life. We have the knowledge and the means to look back and appreciate what earlier generations have done. This imposes a responsibility on us all to think ahead, not in terms of months but of centuries, and to act accordingly.
We define earlier generations by their achievements: the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment. How will future generations define our age? Will it be the Age of Narcissism? The Age of Wanton Consumption and Destruction?
December 6, 2009
