From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Wed Jun 04 2003 - 19:18:00 MDT
Below is a famous quote from Adam Smith explaining how most people really
don't care what happens in China, much as they would like to believe
otherwise. I wonder if people feel the same way about the future; maybe
its something they like to believe they care about, but in the end really
don't care very much. They only talk about it to show how witty or smart
or caring they are, but not because they really care. That might help
explain why people seem so uninterested in thinking seriously about it.
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"Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of
inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us
consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connexion
with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence
of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very
strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would
make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life,
and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated
in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter
into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might
produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the
world in general.
"And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane
sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or
his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and
tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened.
"The most frivolous disaster which could befal himself would occasion a
more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he
would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore
with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his
brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an
object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own.
"To prevent, therefore, this paltry misfortune to himself, would a man of
humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his
brethren, provided he had never seen them? Human nature startles with
horror at the thought, and the world, in its greatest depravity and
corruption, never produced such a villain as could be capable of
entertaining it. But what makes this difference? When our passive feelings
are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active
principles should often be so generous and so noble? When we are always so
much more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves, than by whatever
concerns other men; what is it which prompts the generous, upon all
occasions, and the mean upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the
greater interests of others?"
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Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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