280. Presentism

280. Is this worse than being a racist or a sexist -being a presentist? A presentist? A presentist is someone who favors the present generation at the expense of those to come. Presentism's prejudice for the present, to the detriment of the future. Worse than racism? Well, it exacerbates racism. The shortage of future resources or of good conditions only allows racial bias to more drastically afflict the oppressed. There is a well-documented literature on the racial dimension of environmental injustice already. But worse than sexism? The same reasoning would apply, I think. It is, for example, the women who search for water all day in most subsistence parts of the world, many of which are about to have even less water. Or consider the Missing Woman Figure: with dwindling resources, it is the woman child who will increasingly be abandoned in sexist cultures that abandon female children or malnourish them. I feel like saying, with only the inaccuracy of a metaphor more true than false, that presentists put hundreds of millions on the slave block, right now -shackling future children in oppressive, hot, resource depleted conditions, the slaves to appetite, political instability, and what I called yesterday Global Hurting. Presentism's simply more massive, sweeping and pervasive than either racism or sexism -or is it? We presentists drive our SUVs, let our President avoid a climate treaty, fly our planes to conferences willy nilly. We aren't bad people -our whole society is presentist. It's all we know, like the racist and sexist societies of the past (and still today) which are blind to their assumptions. "Oh, the future of humankind doesn't count as much as us! Not those kids!"