Cities 5: a digression on longtermism

Not closely related to my main argument, but just a brief note:

Longtermism is the version of effective altruism that wants us to think about our ethical imperatives on a much vaster historical scale; it warns us against discounting the value of the lives of future people. (In his retelling of the Good Samaritan story, Phil Christman could have added a longtermist who would have scorned the Effective Samaritan for thinking only of the local and immediate. A longtermist, seeing a wounded man by the side of the road, would surely have “passed by on the other side.”)

Augustine is a kind of longtermist, in the sense that he thinks we should focus not on our immediate desires and concerns but on our eternal destiny. Thus his indifference to politics as we usually conceive of it: “As for this mortal life, which ends after a few days’ course, what does it matter under whose rule a man lives, being so soon to die, provided that the rulers do not force him to impious and wicked acts?” (CD V.17)

C. S. Lewis is writing very much under the sign of Augustine when, in his great sermon “The Weight of Glory,” he says this:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

It is a view that, if does not consign politics to the realm of adiaphora, quite radically decenters it.

We often hear that evangelicalism — and, often, other forms of orthodox Christianity — has been “too heavenly-minded to be of any earthly good.” It has been so focused on “pie in the sky by and by” that it has neglected the prophets’ call to seek shalom — justice and peace in the City. And that critique is absolutely valid. But maybe we could use a little more longtermist decentering of politics these days.