The Existential Why

[lydy]

Over dinner, a dear friend who likes lots of people as individuals, but pretty much no groups, asked why I cared about the continued existence of the human race.  Not wanting to die in a cleansing thermonuclear fire makes sense to him, but I have no children, and I don't believe in the after life, so why did I care about whether or not there were human beings in a hundred years?  

"Right now, there are people who are in deep, meaningful conversations with Plutarch, people who are arguing angrily with Machiavelli, people who are so moved by Sumerian poetry that they want to tell the world, people so angry with Shakespeare they are trying to argue he never existed; and in a hundred years, I want people to be falling in love with Jo Walton, arguing angrily with Herodotus, writing love poetry to Eloise.  I will not see that conversation, but I want it to continue.  It is a great glory, and a beauty that I do not wish to fade from the earth."

Oddly, he thought this was an argument that made sense.  It does not persuade him, but he understands why I think that way.