My latest streaming binge is “3 Body Problem” on Netflix. This is a smart and creative science fiction series with a good dose of mystery, and a dash of detective story. Happily, there are no flying saucers or laser guns, at least so far. I’ve received a basic lesson in quantum physics that I understood, assuming anything in quantum physics can be understood. The cast is excellent, and the production values are high. If Apple can make the headset that is featured in “3 Body Problem,” I’ll pay today’s interest rates on a loan to buy one. You will want one as well.
The series, which is based on novels by a Chinese science fiction author, raises important ethical and moral questions. Now for the spoiler alert, which makes “3 Body Problem” so compelling: If we knew that the Earth was going to be invaded and conquered by extraterrestrials, but that they would not arrive on our planet for 400 years, would we be bothered to do anything about it today? In other words, do we really care about generations that far removed from our present day? We can personally experience children and grandchildren and sometimes even great-grandchildren, but what about humans who we will never experience? Do we care about their future?
We face this question today in our debate over climate change, artificial intelligence, and other issues that will have significant impacts on future generations. Thinking about the well-being of future generations is not a selfish act, and we need only look to the men who wrote our Constitution and Bill of Rights for the best example of this. Although they embodied the ideas of their age, and were divided in their views, they wrote those documents for generations they would never experience. This was not a selfish act and the Constitution and Bill of Rights have proven strong enough to prevail against our enemies, both foreign and domestic.
But have we become so selfish that we can only see what is right in front of us and therefore ignore the well-being of people we will never experience? To counter living only in the present, I believe we should consider the old Chinese proverb, “One generation plants the tree, and another gets the shade.”
Philip Wasserman
Stevenson Ranch
