How easy it is for modern humans to forget that we are part of a Great Wave moving through time. We are the heirs to countless generations’ worth of effort, reaching all the way back to the emergence of life on Earth. We do well to be grateful for the efforts and sacrifices that brought us to the world we live in.
It is easy to criticize when we lose sight of this context. We bemoan global warming and fossil fuel emissions and the earlier generations who did not try to prevent these problems. But we forget that we would not necessarily want the world without fossil fuels, either. They enable so many good things: consistent warmth in the winter and cooling in the summer, fertilizer for improving food security, refrigeration, and countless goods and services (including the electronics that people use to bemoan the state of the world).
It is our duty to shape the world into something we want to live in – and to shape it to support future generations. But we must also realize that same effort has been going on for an unfathomable amount of time. Even if the result is imperfect (and some results are horrifying), there is still much to be grateful for.
Quotes
- John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us
We enter the world as strangers who all at once become heirs to a harvest of memory, spirit, and dream that has long preceded us and will now enfold, nourish, and sustain us.
- Quintus Curtius in Acknowledging the Debts to Our Predecessors:
There is something petty, something small-minded and mean, in refusing to recognize those who taught us. It offends one’s sense of right. No accomplished man should ever believe that he arrived where he did solely because of his own efforts; he stood on the shoulders, and was carried along, by the aggregate labors of those who preceded him.
- Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa:
“Shut up! Don’t you see you’re barely grown? There’s nothing more frightening than a half-baked do-gooder who knows nothing of the world but takes it upon himself to tell the world what’s good for it.””