Value, Trauma, and the Future of Humanity

By R. Jay Wallace
University of California, Berkeley

It has recently been argued that the value of our most important projects and activities
depends on the Afterlife: the continued existence of the human species in future
generations. The argument (which is due to Samuel Scheffler) begins with a speculative
psychological hypothesis, to the effect that our lives would be drained of meaning and
significance if we believed that those of us who are currently alive would be the last
humans to inhabit the earth.

I want to show that even if we accept this hypothesis, it wouldn't follow that the
Afterlife is a genuine condition for the value of our projects and activities. We should
accept that the imminent extinction of the species would deprive our activities of value
only if we can articulate how the things that make them good would be unattainable in
the absence of the Afterlife. But for many of the activities that most importantly
contribute to the significance of our lives, this challenge cannot be met.

How then to understand the speculative psychological hypothesis that peoples' sense of
the value of their activities would be affected by the knowledge that our species will not
continue into the future? I argue that we should interpret this reaction as a form of
psychic trauma: an inability, in the wake of a distressing experience or discovery, to find
value in activities that are nevertheless genuinely good. The question that we need to
address is why, exactly, the realization that there will be no Afterlife would induce in us
a traumatic reaction of this familiar kind.