Intergenerational carelessness reveals economics’ blindness to reproducing the communal life-support

Evidence

Something is only truly desirable, says Nietzsche, if you would wish its eternal return. We touch here on a fundamental point of divergence between the currently dominant economic paradigm and its necessary ecological overcoming. When we build nuclear plants producing radioactive material that will be dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years, we foolishly sacrifice the vital interests of thousands of future generations for the sake of a few brief decades of ephemeral and irresponsible prosperity. This intergenerational carelessness is just one symptom of a deeper weakness [inconsistance] whereby we blind ourselves to the necessary reproduction of the communal on which the continuance of our life forms depends. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 115

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘horizon of transindividual consistence’ and its Nietzschean test of eternal return.
• XREF: Directly applicable to the ADDENDUM ‘On Sacrifice’ piece — future generations as the sacrificial victims of present prosperity. — connects to: Social reproduction theory enables analysis of family and unproductive labor beyond economic reduction
• DEEPTHINKING: The transindividual sustainability argument — that individual rationality is only rational when it reproduces the communal that sustains it — is a genuinely dense re-grounding of economic critique, not a mere premise.

Broader Connections

• Social reproduction theory enables analysis of family and unproductive labor beyond economic reduction #expands (0.78)