Translational Symmetry of Choices and the Burden of Moral Obligation

If we wouldn’t forgive our ancestors for destroying the Earth, why do we expect our descendants to forgive us for doing the same?

We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” — Native American Proverb

Arun Kumar

Summary: A thought experiment places us at the midpoint of a 10,000-year timeline where all generations possess today’s technology. It challenges our moral decisions about environmental stewardship, and explores how psychological biases like moral licensing, temporal discounting, and social validation distort our responsibilities toward future generations.

Let us begin with a thought experiment, one that takes a longer view of humanity — longer than we are accustomed to, longer than our boxed imaginations are trained to stretch.

Imagine a 10,000-year timeline. Not a timeline of primitive tools gradually giving way to rockets, but a more unsettling proposition: at every point on this line, from year zero to year 10,000, humans existed with the same technological capabilities as we do now. Same machines. Same plastics. Same global transportation networks. Same capacity to extract, burn, pollute, clean, conserve, recycle, or destroy.

And here we are, you and I, placed squarely in the middle of this timeline. The year is five thousand. Five thousand years before us, a long unbroken chain of technologically adept ancestors made choices and left their mark on the world we inherited. Five thousand years ahead, a line of equally capable descendants awaits the footprints of choices we will leave behind.

Now here is the question — simple, elegant, and damning: do we want our ancestors to have made the same choices we are making now; and if not, then why are we making them?

Why should we expect moral wisdom from our ancestors while indulging in moral neglect towards our future generations? Although we may think so, however, we do not hold a special place in 10,000-year timeline.

Now imagine a series of tall, neon-lit messages standing upright along the timeline — visible to every generation as they pass by. The Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” is etched across it. But when we look there is something lost in translation. We cherish the Golden Rule when it applies to people sitting across from us at the dinner table or walking beside us in the neighborhood. But when it comes to those who came before or those who will come after — suddenly, reciprocity of the Golden Rule is an inconvenient truth.

The bottom line is that the visual symmetry of this timeline is striking — whatever we choose to do, can also be chosen by any generation. If we choose to pollute, extract, and waste with abandon, then we implicitly accept that our ancestors would have done the same. But if we grimace at the idea of receiving a ravaged Earth from the past, we must also recognize that we have no moral ground to do the same for the future.

So why the disconnect?

Why, with this clear visualization of translational symmetry of the consequences of our actions, do we still act with such reckless asymmetry in choices we make?

Let us begin with the most cited culprit: The Tragedy of the Commons. The phrase sounds poetic, but its implications are brutal. When shared resources — air, water, forests, climate — are unregulated, individual users act in their own self-interest and overexploit the resource, even though it is against everyone’s long-term interest. We all know this story. No one wants to be the sucker who conserves while everyone else exploits. So, we all rush in. We grab what we can. We rationalize.

If I do not take this flight, someone else will.

If I do not drive this car, if I do not build this factory, if I do not expand this business — someone else will.

And so, we participate in the tragedy of the commons. Collective action toward the greater good, when left to individual choice, becomes an entropic impossibility. It is like expecting that, in the absence of a brain, the trillion cells in our body will act independently yet somehow coordinate well enough to sustain our well-being.

Then there’s temporal discounting, a psychological trait for how we routinely undervalue the future. This is not just selfishness; it is baked into our biology.

Our ancestors evolved in environments where immediate threats — predators, famine, disease — mattered more than far-off consequences. If the berries are ripe today, you eat them. You do not save them for a hypothetical famine next year. That impulse — consume now, worry later — may have served us well in a world of short lifespans and local consequences. But today, that same impulse does not serve us well. No wonder, saving money for the rainy day or for retirement is a hard commitment to make and follow.

And perhaps we do not honestly believe the future exists. Not in a visceral way. We speak of our grandchildren, but we do not picture them living in a degraded environment. We live under a kind of moral anesthesia, comfortably numb to our fingerprints on time.

There is another human trait that deserves mention: moral licensing — doing something good and feeling that we have earned the right to do something less good (or bad) afterward without guilt. We go for a run in the morning and then feel fine eating an extra slice of cake later. We buy a reusable bag and feel we have earned a vacation in Bali. We switch to LED bulbs and celebrate with a weekend shopping spree.

We mistake awareness of something for action. We confuse intention with impact.

And then there is the evolutionary desire to be seen, to be validated, to rise in the pecking order. A small hybrid car is good. A bigger hybrid SUV is better. Who can fly more to attend climate summits at faraway places and reach the million-miler status first and to bring that up in casual conversations.

All of these traits — evolved instincts, psychological quirks, social pressures — create a fog through which we look towards the future. If we can articulate the temporal symmetry of choices, and believe in the Golden Rule, then the moral burden of our action is squarely on our shoulders.

It is a simple question to ask: If the environment we have today had been ruined 5,000 years ago by people with our level of capability and our level of negligence, how would we feel?

Would we curse them?

Would we say, “How could they have known and still done nothing?”

Even if we pretend that we are not sure about the consequences of our actions, should we not err on the side of caution? Should we not hope that our ancestors would have done the same for us?

But now, if you will excuse me, it is time for me to drive four miles to the neighborhood coffee shop. I need to buy a tall cappuccino made from beans shipped 6,000 miles away, served in a disposable paper cup with a plastic lid. I will sip it while basking in air-conditioned comfort and pretend to feel virtuous because I brought my own straw. And there I will ponder, with renewed energy brought on by coffee, the moral burden of the choices I (we) make.

Ciao, and thanks for reading