Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumIt's human nature to identify with the living and not the dead.
After all, your ancestors going back to the beginning of life managed to survive and reproduce.
We identify with the living and not the zombies.
That's why we can't deal with complex problems like global climate change and resource depletion.
So long as we live it is difficult for us to count ourselves among the future victims of climate change, resource depletion, and subsequent social collapse.
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)after that don't really matter.
KT2000
(20,588 posts)of Chinese medicine. Their ancient basis for healthcare had everything to do with one's relationship with their ancestors. Sickness was a sign that a person's relationship to their ancestors was impaired and needed to be repaired if possible.
OR
"In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations" ..Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy
I mention this only because whether or not people identify with their past and ancestors (the dead) of future generations, is a societal construct. America is very much in the here and now and cannot imagine what lies beyond. I consider it a form of greed.
hunter
(38,328 posts)We, in the U.S.A., live in a society that truly believes God, Providence, whatever, will bless us with some new form of exploitation when the old one fails. Fusion power, fracking, who knows?
And then, throughout human history, our human "leaders" are always surprised when things don't turn out as they expected.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)Humans have a very inept concept of time in general as well as being unable to see humankind as a single organism on the planet. Humans tend to see individuality above a broader sense of communal life.